From .fig Import to Native Editing
Import fidelity is not a preview problem. It is a semantics problem: frames, variants, variables and vectors have to survive as editable ideas.
.fig → FNX
Opening an existing design is easy if the goal is to render a picture. It is much harder when the user expects every important decision to remain editable.
Fanta’s import path is built around that harder promise. A frame should remain a frame. Text should remain text. Component relationships, variables, vectors and layout behavior should arrive as product state—not decorative pixels.
Rendering is not importing
A visually convincing preview can hide a structurally empty result. The moment a user changes copy, switches a mode or resizes a frame, that difference becomes visible.
We evaluate import as a mapping between design concepts. Geometry matters, but so do identity, hierarchy, layout rules and references. Those relationships determine whether the imported work can keep evolving.
Stable identity makes change possible
Fanta pairs readable FNX with companion .ids sidecars. The readable surface expresses the design; the identity layer helps edits and diffs stay attached to the right node as the document changes.
That separation is especially important for agents. A command needs to target the same layer the human sees, and history needs to explain what happened without treating the entire page as new.
- Frames map to editable containers.
- Text retains content and typographic properties.
- Vectors remain paths rather than raster previews.
- Components and instances preserve reusable relationships.
- Variables and modes remain system-level choices.
Imported work should feel native
Interop succeeds when the user stops thinking about the import. The document should participate in the same selection, inspector, component, history and agent workflows as a project created in Fanta.
This is why the import path and the document model cannot be separate projects. Every fidelity edge case is also feedback about what the native model must represent.
A bridge, not another trap
Designers have years of work in existing formats. Asking them to abandon that work is not a migration strategy. The practical path is to meet the project where it is and make the new model valuable after it opens.
Fanta’s goal is not to make imported files look correct once. It is to make them useful for the next hundred edits.
Real interoperability preserves the decisions inside the design, not only the pixels produced by those decisions.
The takeaway