Similarly, it is not a good idea to directly modify a symbol in (or obtained from) your standard library, unless you want your changes to appear for this symbol everywhere it is used. Also, by altering a standard symbol you run the risk of overwriting your changed version with the original version when you merge symbols between libraries. A better approach when you want a changed version of a symbol is to copy the original symbol to a new name (File Copy Page) prior to modifying the copy. This way you can always distinguish the new symbol from the original, you do not risk accidental overwrites during library merges, and you know exactly where the new symbol is used in reports and elsewhere.
When you want to make the changed symbol more apparent to users than the original symbol in selection lists in INPUT, you can caption the original symbol. This keeps references to the original intact in reports and elsewhere, but enables you to make it less obvious in selection lists. For example, you can caption the original ‘CLS’ material symbol as ‘zzz CLS STANDARD’, thereby moving it to the end of selection lists. You can also caption both the new and original symbols to effectively replace the original in selection lists (so that the old name now selects the new symbol), as in the following:
. . CLS . . . zzz CLS STANDARD
You can copy composite symbols between the Material, Sampler, Well and General applications using the File Merge option. For example, if there is a Sampler symbol that you wish to copy to the Material application, click the Material tab and select File Merge. You see the COMPOSITE SYMBOL MERGE dialog box.
You specify the source application in the Source Type list (you’d choose ‘Sampler Graphics’ in the example), and then select the desired symbol or symbols using the Symbol(s) to Merge field. To avoid breaking any references to the source symbols from reports and elsewhere, you are advised to leave Delete Original(s) unchecked. You can rename any copied symbols in the destination application without harm.
Other SYMBOL DESIGN applications do not have a Merge option. However, you can copy drawing entities from a symbol in one application to a symbol in another provided both are in line-graphics based applications, that is, where symbols are created and modified using gIDraw. This includes Tiles, Discrete Graphics, and Data Markers. So, for example, if you wanted to use the ‘BIO_HAZARD’ discrete graphic as a tile, you would create a blank symbol for it in the destination application (Tiles), open the original in Discrete Graphics, select all the entities (Modify Select Entities), copy them to the buffer, then paste them in the new tile. Note that you will typically need to scale the symbol up or down in size when copying between these applications, using Modify Scale Multiply or similar, and may also need to move the graphic to a different location within the new symbol.
<<Switch(<<Like(<<POINT.PointID>>,"B-*")>>,3,_ <<Like(<<POINT.PointID>>,"TP*")>>,16,_ <<Like(<<POINT.PointID>>,"CPT*")>>,17,_ True,1 _ )>>
as this one instead:
<<Switch(<<Like(<<POINT.PointID>>,"B-*")>>,BH_MARKER,_ <<Like(<<POINT.PointID>>,"TP*")>>,TP_MARKER,_ <<Like(<<POINT.PointID>>,"CPT*")>>,CPT_MARKER,_ True,DEFAULT_MARKER _ )>>
Captioning will not work in this circumstance, because you’re trying to provide user-friendly names to persons doing report design and similar development work, rather than to end users. The actual name of the symbol, not a caption, is what is referenced by a report or expression. Similarly, it is not advisable to rename the original symbol, because it may already be in use by an existing report or expression. For these reasons, you should copy, not caption or rename, frequently used data markers, then give the copies user-friendly names.
Various libraries of useful symbols and colors are available on Symbol Libraries for gINT. For example, a library of USGS symbols is available, as is a set of Munsell soil and rock colors.