Working with EntityGroups

Editing commands will treat all entities in an EntityGroup as a single object. Commands like Move, Rotate, or Copy will act on the entire group.

If you should specify entities for one of these commands at the prompt, that selection will lead to the automatic selection of all group entities.

A typical prompt of a command like this would be:

Specify entities»

The rule is: In commands that allow specification of multiple entities, identifying a single entity of an EntityGroup is a selection of all entities belonging to the EntityGroup(s). When you are prompted to specify entities, you may choose the option Group, and enter a EntityGroup name to specify all entities belonging to the EntityGroup. EntityGroups, therefore, can also be used as user-defined selection sets.

Other modifying commands (Split, Offset, Trim, or EditLength, for example) request a single entity in one or more steps (usually to modify the geometry of drawing entities). In this case single selection is being used. Any time you are prompted to select a single entity, the group does not matter. These commands modify the geometry of single selected entities even though those entities belong to a group. The modified entities will remain members of the group. This feature makes allows great flexibility in working with EntityGroups and provides significant advantages compared to using Blocks.

The following overview summarizes the editing commands and describes how entities that are member of a group will be processed when using the corresponding command.

Delete

Selecting a single entity will select all entities of the group, unless the object selection mode Single has been used. When a single entity of a group is deleted, the entity is removed from the group definition.

Move, Rotate, Scale, Flip

Selecting a single entity will select all entities of the group, unless the object selection mode Single has been used.

Mirror, Copy, Pattern

Selecting a single entity will select all entities of the group, unless the object selection mode Single has been used. The system will apply anonymous names to copied groups ("*A1", "*A2", etc.) that are created by the use of these commands.

Stretch

Those entities belonging to a group that have been selected using the object selection modes Crossing or Cpolygon will be stretched.

Trim, Expand

The prompt to "Select cutting edges" or "...boundary edges" will include all entities of a group, unless the object selection mode Single has been used.

Offset, Fillet, Chamfer, EditLength

These commands always prompt to select a single entity to be modified. That an entity belongs to a group does not matter in these operations. Single entities changed by these commands will remain in the group. If new entities originate from these commands they will not be automatically included in the group.

Split, Weld

When an entity (line, circle, arc, or 2D polyline) is broken into two or more entities by partial deletion, only one of the entities will remain in the group. When an entity that has been broken into two or more pieces is rejoined, the newly created entity is no longer member of any group, even if one or more of the pieces was part of a group.

Block, Hatch, EditHatch

Selecting a single entity will select all entities of the group, unless the object selection mode Single has been used. This also applies to the EditHatch command when it is prompted to select additional entities to be included to the set of entities for related hatch editing.

EditAnnotation

The text entity retains its association to its group if the EditAnnotation command is used to modified text.