Tracking entitiy fake groups with xdata

[JamesMaeding]

I have tools that make callouts with several entities each. Some have a pline with text above and below, and so on. The tools will want to be able to find all the items that go with a callout, then do things with/to them. Currently, I do three things: 1) group the items 2) designate one entity as the parent, and tag it with the handles and "key points" (like text insert points if text) of the other entities, I call them kids, as well as its own handle. 3) tag the kid entities with handle of the parent, as well as their own handles. With that data, you can find the kids of a parent, even if grouping is lost, and if a callout was copied so handles are those of some other callout. The key points allow this, as they are recorded relative to the parent key point (and angle/scale info in some cases). I'm wondering if anyone else has approached this and found a solution they liked. I avoid dynamic blocks for callouts because I have to manipulate the attributes a lot which ends up being a mess, and they update slow through the lisp api at least. Also, maintaining all the blocks needed would not be practical given the options of my tools. I see other progs making anonymous blocks, but I would have hundreds so am thinking that's too heavy, and I do want the user to he able to edit the entities with regular acad commands, even if that thrashes the orderliness of things. Of all the choices, a custom object is not on the table, as C3D has taught me to HATE them. Like really hate them. You can call me a custom object hater now for sure, though its probably due to Autodesk's implementations rather than the idea itself. I like Bentley's approach more where they make items as native if they must add entity types. They don't redesign objects every year though so at least sounds better. thx