Using groups - AutoCAD Tutorial

- [Instructor] We're moving on to a new chapter now where we're going to be looking at reusing AutoCAD content. For that reason, we've got a new drawing for you in the library it's called ReusingContent.dwg. And you can download it to follow along with the videos in this particular chapter. Now what we're going to do when we look at reusing content is we're going to look at groups which we'll cover first. And then we're going to take a look at AutoCAD blocks. Now I've mentioned AutoCAD blocks in the learning AutoCAD course and in this course as well. So we're going to delve into those a little bit more deeply and see how blocks work in AutoCAD as well. First things first though, we're going to look at groups. Now any to be in the home tab on the ribbon and ideally just use the zero layer here, the default layer. So, scroll up to the top of the layer dropdown select the zero like so. And you'll find the groups panel here on the home tab on the ribbon, just click on the flyer arrow and pin it open 'cause you will need to go back to this group manager occasionally when you're working with groups. Now, before we work out what's going to go in our group we're going to zoom in on this central area of the drawing. Now you'll notice we've got some chairs and some tables and some sofas and some tables. And what we're going to look at here is we're going to look at grouping these bits of furniture together using groups in AutoCAD. That will allow us basically to manipulate them and move them around a little bit more easily. Now just before we start just make sure that group bounding box is on like so. Just click on it like that and it will highlight in the panel there. That way when you select a group there's a bounding box showing you the boundary of the group, it's a little gray line. And you'll see that when we create our first group. Now the way to create a group I always avoid just going straight to the group command here. 'Cause it creates a group of objects with a random name. If you go to group manager first it'll open up the object grouping dialog box. And what you want to do is you want to put your group name in here. Now this is all entrance furniture so I'm going to call this one Ent_Furn. And then I'm just going to put 001 like that. Now you can give it a description if you want to, that's entirely up to you. And what we're going to do now is we're going to create this group. So we click on new. That'll take us into the drawing area and you've got to select the objects that you want to go in the group. So I want these three objects here the two sofas on the table. Now you can pick them individually or I'm going to click here, drag crossing selection. I can just go to about there if I want to. They all cross within the window like so. Once they're selected, press enter to finish. And now you'll see in your object grouping you've got entrance furniture 001 and yes they are selectable. Now make sure they are selectable that always helps otherwise you can't select it in the drawing. So make sure that that is selectable by ticking the box and then click on Okay. Now, when you hover over this you'll see they're all one object and when you click on it, there's your group bounding box that I mentioned. But the benefit you have if I zoom out slightly is I've just got the one grip and I can just go oh, I want to move those down there as a group. Hit escape to the deselect. It's that quick and it's that easy. So let's do the same with this furniture here we'll zoom in again a little bit. We'll go back to the group manager and we'll click on new. So this time the group name will be entrance furniture 002, so Ent_Furn002 Now you'll notice I'm doing this in uppercase and lowercase. The groups always end up in uppercase in the listing so it doesn't matter too much if you put in lowercase just make sure you spell things correctly, obviously. So we click on new again and to do a little crossing selection here make sure I get everything, like so. Enter to confirm takes me back to the object grouping dialog box. So I've got two groups now again though, make sure it's selectable tick that box there and click on okay. Now when I zoom out, I can now click on this one. I've got the little grip in the center with the bounding box and I'll perhaps place those down here near the entrance of the building like so. And again hit escape to de-select the group. Now the groups are really easy to use 'cause you can just click on them and move them wherever you want them to go. But more importantly, how do I remove objects from a group or more importantly, lose a group or edit a group? Well, very easy you've got these icons here. You've got here group edit, you've got here explodes or ungroups a group. So let's go to this one first, let's go to ungroup. So I select it and select a group. So if I select this group here like so, they are now ungrouped. Can you see on the command line group entrance furniture 002 exploded and they are back to their original objects. I'll hit escape obviously to de-select them. This is still a group though. So what happens if I want to edit a group? Well, I'll just hit escape there like so and I'll go here edit group like so adds or removes objects from a group. So as soon as I do that says select the group okay, I'll select the group there we go. And I've got a choice of add objects, remove objects or rename the group. I'm going to go to remove objects like so and I'm going to select the table and remove that and press enter to confirm. Now here's where it gets really clever. So if I select that now and click on the group and just move up, you'll notice now that I've only got the two sofas there. Hit escape to de-select, the table is now out on its own again as its own little table. So the trick there is that you can work with the groups, add and remove objects from the groups and edit the groups really quickly and easily. The only thing I must stress is when you're working with groups, always go to that group manager first like so. 'Cause it brings up the object grouping dialog box and you can name your group first before you select the objects. So what I'm going to do here I'm going to select this one like so and I'm going to explode that. Now I can explode it or I can go to remove like so and I'll remove those two objects like that. And you'll notice enter to confirm. And it will go there's no objects in there when I okay that, you'll see that that's on its own and that's on its own, but I've still got a group there. If I go to group manager though, that is there so all I've got to do is I can explode that. So if I explode it, you'll notice it disappears. Okay that and I've got no groups left but all my objects now are back to their individual objects nothing is grouped anymore. Very quick and easy and groups are really useful if you've got a bunch of geometric objects that you want to move all in one go. So group them together, give them a name, move them around your AutoCAD drawing.