I have .ai file which have muliple icons that I want to export idividually as jpgs. Like say I have 10 icons in one file and would like to export as 10 individual bitmap files, is it possible in inkscape?

I tried copying individual icons but its tedious, I can't copy all layers and am missing few layers when copying to new file. Is there a easy way to copy all underlying layers at once? Whats the solution if the a single layer is shared by more than 2 icons.

I'm not an expert user of Inkscape and would appreciate any help on the above, it would make my life lot easy exporting bitmaps.

Starting from scratch, I stack all my icons on top of one another, then turn the appropriate layers on and off as I export. This isn't much help to you, of course.

I can see two suggestions in your case:
1: Export ten times from the one file - select one icon, turn on appropriate layers, and export with "selection" enabled and "hide all except selected" unticked. You might need to add a layer of icon-sized squares as a selection basis first, which you then hide as you export.
2: Copying the entire file ten times, then throwing away the bits you don't want might be faster than than copying just the right bits. Or just set the page boundary around a different icon in each file, and ignore the extraneous stuff.

sg wrote:I have .ai file which have muliple icons that I want to export idividually as jpgs. Like say I have 10 icons in one file and would like to export as 10 individual bitmap files, is it possible in inkscape?

I tried copying individual icons but its tedious, I can't copy all layers and am missing few layers when copying to new file. Is there a easy way to copy all underlying layers at once? Whats the solution if the a single layer is shared by more than 2 icons.

There are several ways to approach this.

First question to ask is, are you converting these icons to SVG and planning to go back and edit them after export, or is this a one-time thing? If you're moving this AI file to Inkscape and planning to work there in the future, I'd rearrange the file to better support this operation in the future. Move each icon on to its own layer, and if you need layers for each individual icon, use sub-layers. This will be a little tedious, getting each icon onto its own layer with sub-layers while maintaining the current layer separations. I can write you detailed instructions on how I'd do this if you like.

If you have ten icons and want to get each one into a separate file while maintaining layer separations, make ten copies of the file and in each one, delete all but one icon. This would be simpler that moving each icon to its own layer, but could be tedious to maintain a bunch of icons in separate files.

The fastest way to export multiple objects is to select them all, select File -> Export Bitmap, and turn on "Batch export n selected objects". The trick is, your icons aren't individual objects. To do that, group each icon... but grouping will pull all the pieces of the group into the same layer, which is a "destructive" operation. If I used this approach, I'd save my work, make a backup copy of the file (just in case), and then group each icon, select everything, do the batch export, and then File -> Revert (or exit without saving). This might be the easiest route if you are in a hurry to just export these. If you're trying to select all the objects associated with one icon across multiple layers and the selection box doesn't get all of them, make sure Preferences -> Selecting has "Select in all layers" as the active option.

But I'm more inclined to take Slow Dog's route, and just put each icon on its own layer with sub-layers. Then I'd export them from the command-line. A layer is just a "group" object with a special flag on it, and it's selectable as an object, and the command-line lets you specify a specific object to export...

inkscape --export-id=layer1 --export-id-only --export-png=icon1.png work.svg

And that produces a graphic that is only what is present on layer1.

Write a BAT file (or shell script on Linux and Mac) to export each layer you need and you'll never have to manually export your icons again.