This morning was my first attempt to use Groups.
Several questions arose.

Should the 4 arcs, (or 4 points), be named before creating the group.
Should the group be renamed to "OuterArc". (e.g.)
When the OuterArc is separated, the +box goes dark, and there is no way to delete it, or change it, in the dropdown display of objects.

Sometimes when a group is hi-lighted, the points go yellow, other times corner angles show up. (Inconsistent?)

Once a group is created, unnamed members remain unnamed, and cannot be named.
Two unnamed subentries can appear, and the 3rd one cannot be deleted.

The drop-down display seems to be in strictly alphabetical order by group.

- Brian

Attached is a 3dm file of the first two stages of 3, circular arcs, for an ionic volute, from an online slideshare site.
I've managed to mess up the object/group dropdown box, and cannot clean it up...

Hi Brian,

re:
> Should the 4 arcs, (or 4 points), be named before creating the group.

There is no rule for this, it's up to your own preference. They can be named before grouping them, or after grouping them, or not at all if you don't have any need to target them individually inside the scene browser.


> Should the group be renamed to "OuterArc". (e.g.)

Same thing here, it's up to you to name or not rename the groups as you see fit.


> When the OuterArc is separated, the +box goes dark, and there is no way to
> delete it, or change it, in the dropdown display of objects.

When the + box for a group goes dark without any +/- being shown that means that the group is empty and contains no objects or other groups beneath it.

The Edit > Separate command does an automatic ungrouping, because if it did not and kept the separated objects inside the same group they would still all select together when you clicked on them making it seem like they were still joined. I guess it would be a good idea for it to delete any groups that are now empty after the separate.

You can remove an empty group by selecting it in the scene browser (click on the right hand side of the line where the selection dot shows) and then use Delete (either press Delete keyboard key or use button on bottom toolbar).


> Sometimes when a group is hi-lighted, the points go yellow, other times corner angles show up. (Inconsistent?)

It looks like there are a couple of bugs with handling point objects that are inside of groups. I'll see about fixing these up for the next beta. It is intended that when a group is selected, all the objects inside it should show as yellow-selected but that's not working for point objects currently.


> Once a group is created, unnamed members remain unnamed, and cannot be named.

Once a group is created, yes unnamed members will remain unnamed and that is by design, creating a group does not automatically change the names of the sub-objects that are now inside the group.

The unnamed objects can be named by selecting them and clicking on the name label in the properties panel, the same as how you name a regular ungrouped object.


> Two unnamed subentries can appear, and the 3rd one cannot be deleted.

Can you post a .3dm file where you're seeing two unnamed children within a single group? It is intended that there should only be one single "Unnamed" label within a group that represents child objects that do not have a name of their own.


> The drop-down display seems to be in strictly alphabetical order by group.

Yes that's correct the Objects section of the Scene Browser displays things in alphabetical order.

Thanks,
- Michael

Thanks Michael for all of the help.

Attached is version 11 of the ionic volute.
See Group07,
It has two sub-items,
a. Outer spiral with a blank box. (This can be deleted with delete key, or screen delete, as you stated.) (I had been trying to right click and delete, no good)
b. Unnamed
(so only one is unnamed.)

Details show either 2 groups for these, or 3 objects. I think that there is only one object.

- Brian

MoI has great commands for drawing this example. Some stages are similar, as reduced scale. Orient can help create the two sub-stages.
Having Groups is a very useful addition to V5b. Before I was using color styles to "group" objects.

I'll study your answers more...

Hi Brian,

re:
> See Group07,
> It has two sub-items,
> a. Outer spiral with a blank box. (This can be deleted with delete key, or screen delete, as you stated.) (I had been trying to right click and delete, no good)
> b. Unnamed
> (so only one is unnamed.)

Right, Group07 has 2 children, one is a group named "OuterSpiral" which is an empty group with no children of its own, and then the 2nd child is the blue spiral shaped curve which does not have a name assigned to it.

It's not very useful to have a group with just one geometric object in it like this. So to clean that up, in the viewport click on the blue curve once and you'll have Group07 selected. Use "Ungroup" and that will promote the children of Group07 up to the top level and eliminate Group07. Then select the empty group OuterSpiral in the scene browser and use Delete or also Ungroup can be used to eliminate it.


But I'm not seeing more than one "Unnamed" entry for the same level in this file, was this meant to be an example of that?

Thanks,
- Michael

Thanks Michael,

I think that I am getting the hang of it.

I believe that I mis-spoke in typing of two unnamed children. Only have had one unnamed child object as far as I know.

- Brian

Looks like there can be groups of groups...
All of the outer spiral related objects.
All of the middle spiral related objects.
All of the inner spiral related objects... after they get created.

Hi Brian,

re:
> Looks like there can be groups of groups...

Yup, groups can be contained inside other groups.

Basically one of the main jobs for groups is if you have a more complex model where you would be trying to manage a list of say 100 named objects for example, you can use groups to arrange related pieces together. You can then collapse some of the groups so that the names contained within the collapsed groups will not be displayed for the moment and so you can work in the scene browser with a shorter visible list.

If you only have a relatively small number of objects where having their names all shown in one single list isn't really a problem then you may not gain very much with using groups for that type of situation.

There are some other things that groups can be useful for like making a set of objects select as one unit to keep them together more easily but hiding some names temporarily is probably the most significant thing.

- Michael

It seems strange, but the slideshare instructions from Donna and the nearly same ones from Simon, have an error.
All of the MidSpiral objects need to be shifted 3.75 cm to the left. (Or at least the Mid spiral.)
All of the 3rd portion of the spiral, the InnerSpiral, and related objects, need to be shifted 1.875 cm to the left. (Or at least the inner spiral.)
So that the 3 turns of the spiral can be joined, without gaps
So the second and third center boxes are not "concentric".
(They did mention that the spiral had to be aligned.)

Donna:
https://www.slideshare.net/ambasadonna/constructing-an-ionic-volute

Simon:
https://www.slideshare.net/ozi/drawing-an-ionic-volute

Using Orient line-line, make copies checked, the moved MidSpiral objects were selected, the MidSpiral start and end used as Orient source line,
and the start and end of the OuterSpiral were used for the Orient target line, resulting in the InnerSpiral objects being created. (50% scale.)
The Groups, and Group names, used as the Orient source were duplicated in the Objects and Groups display, but can be renamed Inner...

- Brian

A quick thought before bed:

Dimensions can be placed in a Group, or Groups.

Example:
Group1, all dimensions for subassembly1.
Group1, ChildGroup1, Horizontal Dims.
Group1, ChildGroup2, Vertical Dims.
Group1, ChildGroup3, Angles.
etc...
Maybe laid out better?

Could some such outline of Dimension groups be pre-formatted?
Or it is easy to set it up from scratch...(?)

Currently, a Dimension can be quickly assigned to a Group or ChildGroup.
Select a dimension, and then click on the Group or Child group to assign it to.

- Brian

A Dimension is a type of object, and behaves like geometric objects...

EDIT: Per Michael, Types can be used instead, see next post.

Hi Brian,

re:
> Example:
> Group1, all dimensions for subassembly1.
> Group1, ChildGroup1, Horizontal Dims.
> Group1, ChildGroup2, Vertical Dims.
> Group1, ChildGroup3, Angles.
> etc...
> Maybe laid out better?

It's certainly possible to do that, but if you want to access all dims of a particular type you can use the Types section of the Scene Browser to do that also, there are different sub types listed under Types > Annotations.

- Michael