Expert: Andre Hickman - 4/19/2009

Question
QUESTION: Good day sir, i am using adobe flash cs3. When i draw a stroke it automatically turns itself to a symbol so if i want to edit it i still have to break it using control B.this makes my work process very slow.can you give any suggestions on how i can draw a stroke without automatically turning itself into a symbol? Thank you in advance sir.

ANSWER: Hey Procopio,

I am totally puzzled!  I have opened up Flash CS3 and tried everything that I can to get a stroke (both pencil and paintbrush) to automatically convert to a symbol.  I can't do it.  I can't find any preference settings that will do it either...

Here's what I want you to do.  Restart the program.  Select Create new Flash file (actionscript 3).  When the scene opens up, I want you to just select the paintbrush as is, and draw a line or two on the blank scene, and tell me what it does.  You should be able to then take the selector pointer and click on the drawing to highlight it, but the "break apart" command should not be active (i.e. should be greyed out), and there shouldn't be a blue box around your selection (signifying it is a symbol).

The reason that I want you to do this, is I that we need to try to narrow down the source of the problem.  If this works the proper way then there is likely something corrupted in the file that you are working with, or some layer in the scene.  If it ends up doing what you said that it is doing, then we are going to have to do some more research to see if anyone else has had this problem. I have never seen this type of behavior before, and I can definitely see how frustrating it can be.

Let me know what happens in this simple test, and we'll move forward from there.

Cheers,
Andre

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Good day sir. I did what you ask but each stroke and line automatically converts into a symbol. Where can i find the button for break apart so i can deactivate it or grey it? Much thanks sir.

Answer
That is just it...There is no other button besides the one you are using to do it manually.  Your strokes SHOULD NOT be instantly turning to symbols, where you have to manually break them back apart.

I've never seen the program do this, and it seems like some sort of bug.  Give me a day or 2 to do some research on the problem, and if I haven't found anything, the best I can tell you is to uninstall the program, then reinstall (you might want to try that now, while you are waiting, if you have admin rights on the machine, and it is not a problem to do so.)

Your flash program is NOT funtioning normally, and each stroke should not automatically be converting to a symbol.  I will do some research on it.

Cheers,
Andre