- We're starting a new chapter now
in our AutoCAD essential training course.
And we're going to take a look now
at reusing content in our AutoCAD drawings.
Now, when we talk about reusing content,
there's lots of different ways
of reusing content in AutoCAD.
One of those is to create groups of existing objects.
So what we're going to do,
we're going to zoom in on the bin store in our drawing.
So the drawing is open in the model tab.
I'm going to zoom in here on the bin store like so.
And you want to get it sort of central
like that in your drawing.
Now just make sure as well on your layer drop down here,
that you have bins set as your current drafting layer.
If it's not set, like it wasn't in my drawing,
make sure that it is now.
And you'll notice on the home tab on the ribbon,
we have a groups panel.
Click on the little fly out there,
and you can see the group manager.
So what we're going to do there
is we're going to group all of the bins together
so that can just move them around as a group.
So the group name is going to be bins, BINS, like that,
and then what we do, is we want to create a new group
and we want to make it selectable.
So I'm going to click on new like so,
and I'm going to select the objects that make up the bins
and that's going to be all of these little polylines here.
So it's just the case of clicking about here,
doing a crossing selection like that
and getting all of them selected.
Press enter to confirm that,
and now you see there's our group named bins
is selectable because we tick the box like so.
And then what I can do is I can just click on okay.
So this is now a group,
when I click on it now can you see it's a group
with a solitary grip and I can click on the grip,
and I can just move the grip around.
What's really nice is it puts a frame
around the group as well which is always good.
So what I can do there is just hit escape
and I'll just click on undo to pop that grip back here.
It's still a group, like so.
Now if I want to edit that group,
I can easily just go back into my group panel here,
click on the fly out here, and go back to group manager.
Now that group bounding box,
was the rectangle around the group that I mentioned earlier.
As you can see it's on at the moment.
If I turn that off now, click on the group like that.
Can you see?
It kind of makes it all a bit weird and wonderful
and then I can right click,
and I can move the group, no problem,
it's still a group, but I haven't got that bounding box.
So what I'll do is I'll undo that,
and I'll select the group again like so,
and switch that bounding box on.
It's much, much easier.
You'll notice when you click.
Can you see then you place it there
it just looks neater and tidier.
So what I'll do, I'll hit escape
to deselect the group again and just undo that move like so.
Now I'm going to go back up here.
We've got group, (inaudible) create a group,
I can ungroup and that explodes or ungroups of group,
I can add or remove objects from a group,
or, I can turn the group selection on and off.
Now ideally that should be blue.
It should be on to allow you to select your groups.
I'm going to go here, group edit.
And what that allows me to do,
is it will ask me to select my group.
Now I can add objects,
I can remove objects or I can rename.
I want to remove objects.
So what I'm going to do now,
is select the objects I want to remove,
so that one, that one,
and these are just polylines that I'm clicking on like that,
press enter to finish,
and now that group will be very different when I select it.
Now, can you see there?
All I've got is those three bins in the group now
because I've removed the other objects.
And what I'll do, I'll hit escape again
and just undo that move with the grip like so.
And then last but not least,
up here what I can do is I can ungroup.
So I click on ungroup, select the group like so,
and now they're just all their individual polylines again
as you can see.
So I've ungrouped that and no group exists
but, go back here to your fly out and go to group manager.
Just check that you've got rid of that group.
Sometimes you can remove objects from a group
and forget to get rid of the group itself.
So always check your group manager as well
just to be on the safe side.
Obviously I cleared all of the objects out of the group
so that means that there was no group left anymore.
But just be careful with that
'cause when you add or edit objects,
sometimes you can remove all the objects
but the group will still exist.