How to Work with Groups in BricsCAD

Quick answer: A group lets you manipulate several entities as though they were one, essentially a named selection. Pick a single member and the whole set selects like a block, but you can still edit individual entities without affecting the rest, or breaking the group apart. Groups can be nested, and a single entity can belong to more than one group at once.

Enabling Group Selection

Bitcode 1 of PICKSTYLE needs to be set (a value of 1 or 3) for group selection to work at all. Ctrl+H toggles it: between 0 and 1 if it’s currently either of those, or between 2 and 3 if it’s currently either of those, the same paired-toggle behaviour covered on this hub’s hatch and gradient system variables page.

Creating a Group

1. Open the Entity Grouping dialog: click the Group tool button on the Tools toolbar or the Home/Groups ribbon panel, choose Group from the Tools menu, or run GROUP directly.
2. Either type a name, or tick Unnamed to create an unnamed group.
3. Optionally add a description.
4. Optionally tick or untick the Selectable option.
5. Click Select entities and create group; the dialog closes temporarily.
6. Select the entities for the new group.
7. Right-click to finish; the dialog reopens with the new group added.
8. Click OK to close the dialog.

Modifying a Group

1. Open the Entity Grouping dialog, the same as above.
2. Select the group you want to modify.
3. Optionally double-click the Name field to rename it.
4. Optionally double-click the Description field to edit it.
5. Optionally click in the Selectable column to toggle that option.
6. Optionally click Add entities to group; the dialog closes temporarily to let you select new entities to include.
7. Optionally click Remove entities from group; the dialog closes temporarily to let you select entities to take out.
8. Click OK to close the dialog.

Ungrouping Entities

1. Open the Entity Grouping dialog.
2. Select the group or groups you want to delete.
3. Click Un-group selected groups; the selected groups are removed.

Ungrouping deletes the group itself, but the entities that belonged to it stay in the drawing.

Reordering Entities Within a Group

1. Open the Entity Grouping dialog.
2. Click Re-Order entities; the Order Group dialog opens.
3. Optionally click Highlight to see each entity’s current position in the drawing.
4. Optionally click Reverse Order to reverse the order of every entity in the group at once.
5. To reposition a single entity: enter its current position in the Remove from position field, and its new position in the Enter new position number for the entity field.
6. Optionally specify how many objects to reorder in the Number of objects field.
7. Click Re-Order; a message confirms the group has been reordered.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can one entity belong to more than one group? Yes, a single entity can be a member of multiple different groups at once, and groups can also be nested.

What happens to the entities when I ungroup them? Nothing, they stay right where they are in the drawing; only the group itself gets deleted.

Why can’t I select a group by clicking one of its members? Check PICKSTYLE. Bitcode 1 needs to be set (a value of 1 or 3) for group selection to work.

Can I edit one entity in a group without breaking the group apart? Yes, that’s one of the main points of using groups, individual entities stay editable without affecting the rest of the group or dissolving it.