Full Version: V5 beta Apr-27-2026 available now (Sticky)

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Hi Jeff, thanks for the feedback, putting it on this thread is fine.

The behavior of groups in MOI is modeled after 2D vector drawing programs like Adobe Illustrator, Affinity Designer, etc... because they have had groups for a long time and there is a lot of consistency for how they behave.

So usually to answer group behavior questions I check several 2D illustration programs and if they all agree that I try to do that as well.

Also I should mention that although groups are the first kind of hierarchical structures in MOI I expect to add others in the future like probably "folders" which will be able to have different behavior than groups.


> - Selecting an item in a group - best done from the Objects list, or click twice
> on the object - once to select the group an then another to select the object in
> the group. I can live with that but would rather just select the object in the
> group. If I want to select the whole group, then I can do that form the object list.

Well it's kind of the #1 purpose of groups that they make a set of objects all select and transform as one unit.

That's very uniform behavior in all 2D vector drawing apps that I have seen.

Note that in addition to additional clicks stepping into the hierarchy you can also do a Ctrl+click.

When you hold down Ctrl and click on an unselected object that is inside of a group that object will get individually selected with that single click no matter how many nested levels.


> Transform-Mirror. If I select an object in the group, and mirror it, the mirrored
> copy is created outside the group. I would expect it to remain in the group so
> that I don't have to move it back into the group. This one I find quite annoying.

At first I thought you meant mirroring a selected group should make a result with both pieces inside of the same group. But you mean when there is a child of the group selected?

I'll have to test that in some other programs.


> - You can create two groups with the same name (copy/paste).

I just tested this with Affinity Designer, Inkscape, and Microsoft Word, all of them have the same behavior, no change in names after copy/paste.

If trying to do that it seems like you could get a lot of "copy of copy of copy of" pretty quickly in the names.


> Within a group, select an object. Turn off visibilty for all other objects in the
> group. Export the selected object (in my case to STL). When the export
> completes, all object in the group become both visible and selected.

This is a bug from the export process being done before groups existed so it was ok back then to only save and restore hidden and selection properties on the top level objects. I've almost got it fixed up.

Thanks, - Michael

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Michael,

I'm getting better at using groups effectively.

I am still making foolish mistakes such as trying to copy one object in the group and end up copying the entire group.

But one error that sometimes occurs is a bit more annoying.

When working on one object in the group I often use the boolean tools to make changes to the object and when I do it right they work fine.

What isn't so good is when I manage to select the group by mistake and then the program ends up working hard to apply the boolean operation to all of the objects in the group.

I realize they are my mistakes but what if you could somehow analyze what I just told the program to do and ask if I actually want to do what I just tried to do, such as asking me if I really want to union the 37 objects that are selected.

Not sure exactly what might help but Just a thought.

Thanks.

Frederick

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Hi Michael,

I have been giving some thought as to why the Group feature is not proving to be as intuitive for me as everything else in MoI is.

I think it is because I see Groups as an organization feature, rather than an operational feature.

That is to say, I rarely want to operate on the Group itself but most always on objects in the group.

I know I can control-click on an object in the group and it selects just the object but I think that change is the source of my problems.

Perhaps you could have an option to "invert" that behavior.

With the "inversion" option active, control-clicking an object in the group would select the group, while "normal" clicking would be as it was prior to groups, it would just select the object clicked on.

I think having the option would solve most every problem I have had with groups.

Another thought.

Thanks.

Frederick

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Hi Frederick,

re:
> With the "inversion" option active, control-clicking an object in the group
> would select the group, while "normal" clicking would be as it was prior to
> groups, it would just select the object clicked on.

Are there any examples of other programs that have this behavior with groups?

- Michael

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Message 11970.41 was deleted

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Hi danperk, it's cool to see the cross hatching getting used!

> Has the copy Ai and Copy PDF to clipboard changed since version 4?

Not much.

What happens if you open the AI file made by Save As, then inside Illustrator select all and copy/paste into a new page do you see the same kind of layer mutation?

It seems to be something that Illustrator does when pasting.

Looks like there is a setting in Illustrator that you need to change so it won't merge all the layers when pasting:

https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/18438/how-to-preserve-layer-settings-when-copying-between-files

On the Layers panel, there is a little arrow in the upper right corner, click on it and pick the menu item "Paste Remembers Layers".

- Michael

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Thanks Michael!

I deleted my post when I remembered the 'Paste remembers layers' setting. That was late last night, but you were on it!


Thanks for for best and fastest support in software development!

Image Attachments:
Ai_Rem.png 

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