Complex Object Ordering using Illustrator

This has been discussed before, but here it is all in one place: 

I needed to scribe a lot of words and images on a complex block diagram. Each word was crafted of individual hand-drawn letters, which in turn were made up of up to three strokes. This involved a lot of copying and pasting within Illustrator. Since VideoScribe's drawing order uses the path creation order from Illustrator, the objects scribed in essentially random order when first imported into VideoScribe.

Here's how to fix it:

1. In illustrator, create an action for the command sequence CUT then PASTE IN FRONT (Command-X, Command-F on Mac, CNTRL-X, CNTRL-F on Windoze). Assign this Action to an F-key (like F5).
2. Using the selection tool (black arrow), select each object in the order you want it to appear, then press F5. If a letter or object consists of multiple strokes, you must select each stroke in order. 
3. Once you have hit every object in order, test the SVG file in VideoScribe. If you got something wrong, it's easy to fix: Open the Illustrator Layer menu, carefully select all of the objects you want to reorder, and move them down (earlier) or up (later) the list. 

Hi Dave, thanks for sharing your experiences and providing this tip!

Hi. Thanks for the tip. It really works if you implement in that way.  but I have a different situation.  

Is there anyway : we can make Sparkol draw the layer at the bottom later than a layer (or sublayer) above it ?  I have to put coloring below the object and want it to appear later.

You can do that one of two ways: 

1. Create the colored object, screen capture it, then bring it in to VideoScribe later in the timeline as a placed object (no drawing time). Line it up perfectly and the coloring will just "appear."
2. Use an external video editor, which will give you tremendous flexibility for this and many more tasks.

I'll give it a try. Thanks.