One of the core functionalities of Paragraphic is to make it easy to make repetitions of things, and then modify these repeated elements in various ways to make interesting patterns and effects. Beside the many repeater tools you can use for this, there is also the instance layer feature.
Instance layers are basically copies to another layer, that update live with any change to the original layer. Sort of like components or symbols in other applications. So you can use this to manually place and distribute copies of a layer, while having these copies update with any change to the original.
However, with the generative node-based system in Paragraphic you can also do much more, since you can add further nodes modifying these instances. For example changing colors or transforming some elements. To make the feature even more powerful you can also then make instances of these modified instances, establishing chains of inheritance.
Development update
Development is progressing more or less according to plan, with the first Test Phase with external testers nearing the end. It’s been very useful getting this initial feedback, and it has already resulted in a lot of improvements and bug fixes.
One issue that has proven more complicated than expected has been code signing on Windows, which has unfortunately delayed a lot of the windows version testing. So that will be a priority to get sorted for the next testing phase along with some other OS integration improvements.
Besides that focus will now be to add more functionality and fix the bugs and issues discovered during testing. You can find out more details about the development plans in the development roadmap.