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Element Grouping
There are several situations in which you might want to operate on a number of elements at the same time, such as to align them in a certain orientation or to move them whilst maintaining that orientation, or to reformat the elements with the same characteristics. To group the elements you can:
- Click on specific elements while pressing the or , or
- Click on a point on the diagram and drag diagonally across a number of adjacent elements to select all elements within the dragged boundary
These two methods set a temporary grouping. You can also fix the selection to group the elements permanently during a sequence of work sessions, until such time as you specifically ungroup them again.
Grouping Elements
With multiple elements selected on a diagram, right-click on any of the elements and select the 'Group Elements' option. Whenever you click on one of the grouped elements, the others in the group are selected as well.
Ungrouping Elements
Right-click on any of the grouped elements and select 'Ungroup Elements' to make all the elements in that group individually selectable again
Notes
In a permanent grouping:
- Right-click on an unselected group element to display context menu options for working on that element alone; select the element and then right-click to display the context menu for working on multiple elements
- You can select another element either within the group or outside it using the keyboard arrow keys
- You can temporarily remove an element from the group for an operation, by pressing the as you click on it; when you click on the diagram background and back on the group, the excluded element is again part of the group
- You can update the appropriate windows with the properties and features of different elements in the group by double-clicking on the next element to investigate
- The feature complements the facility for setting bookmark values, either to add bookmarks to every element at once, or to set the same value to the bookmarks on the elements