Group command doesn't group

[jwright1962]

Happy New Year Forum!!

Group command "goes thru the motions" but doesn't make the group.  I can make a group, the group will "highlight", can find the name of the group however, when I use the move command to move the group and I select an entity in the group only that entity gets selected or moved... not the group...  Whiskey Tango?  I've rebooted...  went thru all the standard "reset" motions but no joy... any suggestions?

[Alfred.NESWADBA · Accepted solution]

Hi,

>> when I use the move command to move the group and I select an entity

>> in the group only that entity gets selected or moved... not the group

Please look to setting PICKSTYLE (>>>details<<<), for group selection it should be set to 1 or 3

- alfred -

[jwright1962]

EXCELLENT THANK YOU...  never new this was possible...  I mean the pickstyle setting...  don't know how to mark this as SOLVED but it is.

[douglas.shortCM2W5]

This is confounding.

Used to be (until recently) you highlight a group of lines, arcs, hatch, then type GROUP in the command line and then you have a group.  It basically puts an invisible "bubble" around these selected items that can then be moved as a single unit.  Very handy.

NOW, that's all changed.  

Now I highlight the items I want to unite as a group and... nothing happens.

The "group" is still a bunch of individual elements.

I never bothered or even knew a group could be named.  Never needed that.

Now a dialogue box wants all sorts of information.

I just want to unite a selection of elements that an be united, moved, deleted, as a group.

No clue why this changed or why everything on autocad is so counterintuitive/complex.  Who decides to change things that work perfectly well?

[pendean]

@douglas.shortCM2W5 CTRL+SHIFT+A is used to toggle grouping on/off, perhaps it is off for you: this is otherwise know as the PICKSTYLE variable setting toggle, usage of the latter is explained in HELP.

[douglas.shortCM2W5]

Thanks for the quick reply.

For whatever reason, I rarely use command key shortcuts, rather, for most things I use the COMMAND line.  I tried control+shift+A.  That didn't seem to work.  I figured you have to highlight the objects you want in your group, then click control + shift + A.  The command line reads <group on>, but then what.  I hit return and every single thing in my model space is highlighted.  ????  

For years and years I have simply selected the objects I want to have in a group, then type "GROUP" into the command line, return, and presto, I have a group.  I have never used or even known about any naming, editing or anything else.  It's clearly not something I've needed in ten years.  (If I want reusable "groups" I make blocks.)   If I want to edit the group, I usually move it, select it, type UNGROUP in the command line, make the changes I want, highlight the revised set of objects, type GROUP in the command line and now I have a revised group.  This was 100% useful to me--something I did dozens of times a day.  Now, it's not working at all. I have no idea about the PICKSTYLE.  I clicked on the PICKSTYLE link, but I had no idea what that page was talking about--was confused.

This is the thing about AUTOCAD that makes me absolutely insane.  How can it me so difficult to do something so simple?  Especially since it worked consistently the same for many years.  

Thanks again for reaching out so quickly.

[cadffm]

For decades there wasn't a group dialog in AutoCAD! Only in LT.

And the usual shortcut toggle for group-selection is ctrl+h (try this).

Or pickstyle as you can read above, but this isn't a toggle.

Group command works, but what you after is the old dialog (like it was present in LT much longer than in AutoCAD.

Today it is still there, but by Classicgroup command

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2022/ENU/AutoC...

HTH

[pendean]

@douglas.shortCM2W5 Interesting: it still works as you described in plain AutoCAD2020 through plain AutoCAD2023 here for me (so does UNGROUP). Did you go through and set PICKSTYLE variable to the default listed in HELP? What's confusing about it, set it to 1 (that's a one).

Are you really looking for a pop-up as suggested by others?
Or were you an LT user before this version?

G is the stock abbreviation for GROUP in the core program I believe: perhaps "group" is different due to an add-on?