you can do different modes for master variants as variables with same behavior, not by changing modes, cause it is only 4 modes, but if i make different names for instances
For our color system, I have well over 200 semantic color variables organized into nested groups (four or five levels deep in some places) in our primary collection.
Being able to expand and collapse variable groups is hugely useful when working in the variables panel (to hide those I don’t care about at the moment and more sanely drill in on the ones that do), but I also find it really annoying that the expanded and collapsed states don‘t persist when I close the panel out and reopen it.
Additionally, I would love to be able to collapse and expand multiple nested levels of variables with a single click + modifier key, as we can do when expanding and collapsing layers.
When selecting a color variable to apply to an object, the square swatch previews that appear in the color library picker reflect the mode of the selected object. This is very helpful.
When aliasing a color variable in the variables panel, though, the square swatch previews in the color library picker are based on the default mode rather than the mode in which the variable is being created. This can get confusing.
Copying and pasting variable value assignments (especially copying and pasting multiple values at once) would be a huge time-saver.
It would help with any number of use cases that currently require repetitive manual value assignments, but one particular situation I’ve run into multiple times now is adding new variables and having to set their values individually across existing modes.
As a simplified but concrete example: Let’s say I have a color scale with different color definitions across three modes and want to add a set of semantic variables that alias to individual steps in that scale.
I start by creating aliases in Mode 1…
If the semantic values in Modes 2 and 3 are going map to the same steps in their respective color scales as the semantic values in Mode 1 did…
… then, on each of the remaining value fields, I have to manually repeat the assignments I’ve already made, entailing the following (×6):
- Clicking on the field itself
- Moving my mouse cursor to click on “Libraries”
- Scrolling to (or searching for and scrolling to) the color scale variable/group
- Selecting and clicking on the right step
This can get tedious, particularly if I’m adding a bunch of new variables and if the library I need to search through to find the specific target variables I’m aliasing them to is already complex.
It would be great to be able to instead just copy and paste the assignments from Mode 1 over to Modes 2 and 3 (as I might do in a spreadsheet).
Even if I need to shift one mode’s steps (in this example, Mode 2’s) slightly compared to the other modes…
… I imagine I’d still copy and paste the values first before adjusting the exceptions, which involves a quicker procedure than a net-new variable assignment (in this case: click, scroll up two steps from color 300 to color 100, click).
Let’s say I create a collection and then realize some variables in that collection should be in a different collection. I have no way to move them. Ii have to delete them and remake them in another one. Also, if you ungroup a collection, it destroys them all. You have to grab the child group in the left panel and pull it up and out of the parent. It’s not a great system. It would also be a lot better if I could copy/paste or duplicate with command keys instead of having to right click a variable and duplicate it.
this helps to document in-place
