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grouping_items
Some things on a sheet belong together: a picture and its caption, a symbol with a frame drawn round it, a block of symbols with the notes that explain them. Without groups they have to be selected piece by piece every time they move or are copied, and it is easy to leave one behind.
Group ties selected items together so that they select, move, copy and delete as one. Ungroup undoes it. This was asked for in issue #349 and on the forum (#2467, #356), and proposed in discussion #1070.
Menu names are given in French, as QElectroTech shows them until the translations are updated, with an English gloss in italics.
- Select two or more items. Any mix of these can be grouped:
- symbols,
- free texts,
- shapes (lines, rectangles, ellipses, polygons),
- pictures.
- Choose Edit ▸ Group ▸ Group. It is also in the right-click menu of the selection, and in command search (Ctrl+Shift+M, type "grouper").
Group is greyed out when the selection is fewer than two items, or is already exactly one group.
Wires are never part of a group. They are drawn between symbols, so they follow their symbols when the group moves, exactly as they do today.
| You do | What happens |
|---|---|
| Click any member | the whole group is selected |
| Click again on a member of a selected group, without dragging | only that member stays selected, to edit it on its own (§3) |
| Drag a member | the whole group moves |
| Arrow keys, with the group selected | the whole group moves |
| Draw a selection rectangle that touches part of a group | the whole group is selected when you release the mouse |
| Ctrl+click a member of a selected group | the whole group leaves the selection, as a single item would |
| Ctrl+click a member of an unselected group | the whole group joins the selection |
| Copy, cut, Delete | act on the whole group |
| Shift+Space, Rotate the group | the whole group turns 90° round its centre, keeping its layout |
| Space, Rotate, with only the group selected | the same: the group turns as one piece (§3) |
| Paste | the copy is a new group of its own, separate from the original |
| Duplicate a sheet | each group on it becomes a new group on the copy |
Grouping groups merges them. Select a group and another item (or another group) and choose Group: the result is one group holding all of them. There are no groups inside groups.
- Click any member: the whole group is selected.
- Click the same or another member of that group again, without dragging: now only that member is selected.
- Edit it on its own — move it, change its properties, delete it. The rest of the group stays where it is and stays grouped.
Clicking a member of that group once more selects the whole group again. Clicking on a symbol's own text (its label, for example) counts as clicking the symbol. A drag never picks one member out: dragging a member of a selected group moves the whole group.
With a whole group selected (and nothing else), Space, Rotate turns the group 90° round its centre, keeping its layout — exactly what Shift+Space, Rotate the group, does.
Any other selection rotates as before, each item where it stands: several items that are not one group, a group together with other items, or a single member picked out of its group. Wires between the group's symbols do not count as "other items" — they follow their symbols.
If one member of a group has its position locked, the whole group stays put, whichever member you drag, and the status bar says why: This group cannot be moved: the position of one of its elements is locked. The arrow keys and the Align commands follow the same rule. To move the group, unlock the item or ungroup.
Select a group, or any member of it, and choose Edit ▸ Group ▸ Ungroup, also in the right-click menu and command search. Every member becomes a separate item again, and nothing moves.
Both commands are undoable. Undoing Ungroup restores exactly the groups there were before, not new ones.
Neither command has a default shortcut (Ctrl+G is already go to element). You can assign one under Configure QElectroTech ▸ Shortcuts, in the Diagram editors group.
Each grouped item carries one extra attribute, group, holding the group's
id; members of the same group share the id. Nothing else in the file
changes:
- A project without groups saves exactly as it did before, byte for byte.
- An older version of QElectroTech opens a project with groups, shows every item, and simply ignores the grouping. If it saves the project, the groups are lost.
Groups are also recorded in the project database (a group_uuid column on
the element, shape, free-text and picture tables), so a query or script can
find which items belong together. See
The project database.
Planned in discussion #1070, not built:
- Distribute (spacing items evenly). The Align commands already treat a group as one item, see Aligning items.
- Nested groups.
- Groups in the symbol editor (element editor).
Group selected texts, which groups the texts of one symbol, is a different, older feature and is not affected.
- Aligning items — putting symbols back on the grid
- Templates — saving a set of items for reuse: select them and use Create a template in the right-click menu
- Mouse modifiers — what Ctrl and Shift change while you select and drag
- The project database — the tables a query or script can read
