Additional Considerations
The following are some additional items to consider when creating custom symbols.
- We recommend exporting your template files, renaming them slightly (but keeping the extensions of .ezsym) and using File Locations to point to the newly named files when editing is complete. This preserves the original empty Symbols.ezsym file and also gives you a sample from which to work.
- If you have created custom symbols, it is a good idea to make a backup copy of your template files before performing further editing. You can do this by exporting the custom symbols. If your editing of the file results in the XML being uninterpretable, you can import the backup file and start over. See Exporting a Symbol File for more information. If your actions corrupt the file, you can reset the symbols as described in Removing the Custom Symbols. All custom settings will have to be re-entered, however.
- You should delete the symbol definitions from the template for the symbols you are not going to customize. Symbol definitions that are not specified in the template will use the default symbols supplied with EasyPower based on the standard selected in Tools > Options > One-line Symbols. If you include symbol definitions in the file that match the default symbols, those symbols are still considered to be customized.
- If an equipment type is listed more than once in the template file, only the last type is used, and earlier references are ignored.
- If you are designing a symbol from scratch, you may find it useful to draw it out on a grid first. See Coordinates for an example of the coordination grid.
- If you receive the message "Error importing custom symbols" while attempting to import a custom symbols template, this usually indicates an issue with the tags in the symbol template. For example, you may still have some tags for equipment that you didn't intend to include in the custom symbols template file.
