I have been using Blender for some time (for architectural work) and consider reasonably fluent at modelling.
However there is a whole topic area that I just don’t seem to be able to find an answer to:
I would like to be able to assemble a composite object - like a set of table and chairs, for example and to save it in a special blender file that would act like a sort of warehouse. Then, when building a specific project I could append a piece of furniture from that file. (I believe it is groups that I need here).
When I bring a group in, however, there is the risk that individual pieces of my object (cushions for example) can get separated from the rest. I would like to be able to pick up the whole group with a simple click (just as if it were a normal Blender object). As well as defining a group, I have tried parenting the individual sub-objects to one object that I want to be the owner and then marking the sub-objects non-selectable. This appears to work some of the time.
The other issue I have is with duplication. If I select the parent object and duplicate it, I only get a copy of that object and not the children (or am I mistaken ?)
You can see I am a little confused. I’d appreciate some advice on how to manage and manipulate a library of composite objects
When I bring a group in, however, there is the risk that individual pieces of my object (cushions for example) can get separated from the rest. I would like to be able to pick up the whole group with a simple click (just as if it were a normal Blender object)
Just move the parent object or parent all objects to an empty and just move the empty instead of any individual object in the group.
Or select all objects in the group (Shift+G) before moving anything
Or set the outliner to Groups and select the group in the outliner which will select all the objects in that group
Thanks for the reply. Do I take it then that the best idea is to parent all components to one of the objects and to group them also - so that they can be appended in one go ?
So I just did the experiment. The following procedure gets close to what I want to do:
Create several objects
Parent objects to one of the objects
Mark the children as non-selectable
Create a group containing the objects.
Now I can select and manipulate this object easily (even when the scene is crowded). I can save it to a file and append it (as a group) and the selectability etc is all preserved.
BUT … if I try to duplicate or link the group object only the parent object is duplicated or linked.
Maybe am trying to use groups in a way that was not intended.
Maybe it is not reasonable to bring expectations from other modelling systems (Vectorworks, Sketchup) into Blender
Maybe it would be easier simply to join (ctrl-J) all the individual pieces into one object.
(I love Blender, by the way - just trying to understand how to use it more effectively)
If you are duplicating a bunch of objects, if they are a group, simple select the group and duplicate, or select the parent and children and duplicate. Be aware though, duplicates via group mean if you select group, you select both the initital and copy group.
As soon as you have a group in a working file you should have option to Add Group Instance. Put away on a far Layer original group (created or imported), Shift-A -> Group Instance add it on a first or any other working Layer.
Ofc, any changes you apply to the original Group’s objects will reflect on all duplicates.