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Wade, if I understand you correctly, this would be like exploding a symbol, but not having to exploded it. Changes to the one symbol would *not* affect the other instances of that symbol.

This could be useful. Maybe a way yo do it would be to have a Save As/Replace function all in one step?

I don't even understand the point of all of this. What are you trying to achieve? And for what purpose?

This allows me to create a symbol that is unique to the drawing only without having to save it out to the hard drive. For example, I use bring in my standard details as unexploded symbols so I make changes to them on the hard drive I have to option to reload them in each drawing without having to duplicate the changes. If I have a drawing that needs a standard detail (say a footing for example) and then needs a second copy of it with a slight modification that I do not want to save out to a DSF file (soils engineer recommendations?), I can use this to create a "unique" copy of it and change that copy without affecting the original instance of the symbol within the drawing.

I find this to be similar to the way components work in Sketchup. I can now create symbols easily within the drawing for repeated information that I don't have to save out to my symbol library. I have also found this useful for posts that are of an odd dimension (that occur multiple times in one job), but that I don't foresee using all that often.

I use the Alt method you posted above which takes about 7 secs to Dbl Click, Ctrl+A, Pick insert point if turned on, close symbol, Ctrl+Shift+V. I try to copy the contents to my clipboard ahead of time before I leave the first symbol to save a step or two if I have enough forethought, but if there was a 'Save As New Symbol' option via the Ctrl+Right click 'Symbol Tools' context menu below the Save As, that would be pretty handy. Gets my vote. We use the heck out of the Ctrl+Shift+V. Would also love it if we could create multiple new symbols via Ctrl+Shift+V without it loosing the clipboard contents each time and having to go back to the source and re-copy and then Ctrl+Shift+V again to create the next unique symbol.