Hi,
I feel like I'm missing something but my searches, (web & forum) haven't addressed my specific problem. I apologize in advance if my searches were not using the correct terms.

My goal is to just save my visible layers to a new svg file. I am building a small library of icons an have many layers of different backgrounds in different colors. I keep the top layer to add various icons and go down the list of background layers making them visible one at a time till I find a combination I like. When I do, I would like to be able to export those visible layers to a separate svg file as a finished icon.

My solution for now is to just group all the visible objects and copy/paste them into a new instance on inkscape with the proper template. This works fine but wanted to know if I was missing something obvious that could make this happen with fewer steps.

Many Thanks

Inkscape is missing an option to save a selection (or (visible) layer(s)) as new SVG file. These are known feature requests, and one of them recently has seen some progress in the development branch (a patch had been provided to add 'New from Clipboard …' to the 'File' menu).

See also:

• Save/Export Selection as SVG (#170546)
• New from Clipboard / Paste as New - create a new document from clipboard contents (#170764)
• Possible Add For Saving Layer As (#171885)

Thank you for the very informative answer and links. I knew I couldn't be the only one wanting this functionality, and just figured I overlooked something.

I'm assuming I couldn't apply the patch to my current build and would have to run the dev build to try it? Either way I'm glad to see it has been addressed and hope it makes it into the core in the near future.

Regards