|
Working with Groups |
  
|
|
Working with Groups |
|
Watch the Grouping Pieces online video.
See the Selecting Multiple Pieces topic.
Working with Groups
You work with a group just as you would with any other piece of furniture, but you can always tell it is a group because 
the Ungroup button will appear under 
the Select Group button at the top of the Design Menu screen.
To break a group into its constituent pieces, click the Ungroup button. Or, to break every group in your entire design, Click Options in the Design Editor menu bar and then click Break All Groups.
Any group of pieces you create will continue to exist until you break it.
You can make groups that contain other groups.
You can do nearly anything with a group you can do with a regular piece of furniture except change its size. That is to say, you can duplicate, rotate, replicate and delete groups just as is they were simple pieces of furniture.
Moving/Rotating Individual Group Members
When a group is selected, you will see that one of its members will be colored using a slightly darker shade of red. This is the master piece of the group. You can change the master piece by simply clicking on a different group member.
If you drag with the right mouse button, only the master piece is moved, not the entire group. This action does not break the group.
If you drag in the Rotation Rosette with the right mouse button, again only the master piece is rotated, not the entire group.
Another way to manipulate group members is to break the group, make the needed adjustments and then re-group the pieces. This is what you might do if say you wanted to change the size of a piece within a group.
Special Group Related Buttons
Whenever a group is selected as the current piece, some special buttons appear at the left of the screen:
Mirror Group buttons will move and rotate the pieces in a group either horizontally or vertically. Usually you will want to duplicate the group before using these buttons.
Align Group buttons will align the members of a group on the current master piece either horizontally or vertically. This can sometimes generate unexpected results, but you can always use undo to scramble back from an unwanted result.
Group Names and Colors
Groups have names and colors. Names are generated automatically by PartyCAD, but you can change the name of a group the same way you change the name of a piece. The colors of a group are derived from the colors of its component pieces. If you change a group color, what really happens is the color in the component pieces is changed. The order of the colors for groups may change over time, so ignore order and be guided by the colors shown instead.
Saving and Using Group Pieces
Any group you make can be saved to your furniture library for later reuse. To do this:
- Make a group
- Click File in the Menu Bar and then click Save as Piece... A save menu will appear.
- Click the save group as a grouped piece option button
- Check the Make Fancy Thumbnail box
- Set the destination box at the bottom of the menu to My Furniture Library
- Enter the name of your grouped piece piece in the Name box
- Click the Save button.
Grouped Pieces load just like other furniture you create, except they load as a group. This means you could, for instance, make a group of all of the furniture you use frequently and save this as a grouped piece into your My Furniture Library. You could then load this grouped piece and break it as the first step in creating any new design.