Help centre · Modelling

Groups, components and tags

Group objects, make components whose copies update together, glue them to walls, lock them, and organise the model with tags and phases.

Groups and components keep related objects together, and tags let you show, hide and colour parts of the model as a set. Ctrl (⌘ on a Mac) shortcuts are written as Ctrl below.

Make a group

Select the objects and press Ctrl+G, or choose Edit → Group. With several objects selected, the Properties panel has a Group button too. A group moves, rotates and copies as one.

To take a group apart, select it and press Ctrl+Shift+G, or choose Edit → Ungroup.

Walls, floor slabs, roofs, stairs, doors, windows and room tags can't go into a group, because joins, rooms and openings depend on them. If your selection includes them, the rest is grouped.

Edit inside a group

Double-click a group, or click Edit inside in the Properties panel. A bar shows what's open, and clicks now pick the objects inside it. Press Esc, click Close, or click outside it to close it.

Make a component

A component is a group whose copies stay the same. Select the objects and press G, choose Edit → Make component, or click Make component on a group. Copies, duplicates and arrays of it are all linked.

Open one copy, change it, then click Close and update copies: every other copy gets the same change. In the Properties panel:

Select copies selects every copy in the model.
Make unique turns this copy into a component of its own.

The Library panel's Components in this model section lists every component with its number of copies.

Glue a group to a wall

Select a group or component and click Glue to a wall. Hover over a wall's face and click. It faces out of that side of the wall, and from then on moves along the wall and stays with it when the wall moves.

Turn on Cut an opening to sit it in the wall's thickness and cut a hole its size, like a window. Without it, it hangs on the face, like a sign or a cabinet. Unglue puts it back on the level. Curved walls only take doors and windows.

Lock something

Choose Edit → Lock, or turn on Lock on a group. A locked object can't be picked in the view. To change it, select it in the Scene panel and choose Edit → Unlock.

Find things in the Scene panel

The Scene panel lists every object in the model as a tree, level by level. Type in Filter objects to find one by name, and use the eye button on a row to hide or show it. Select locked objects here.

Tag objects

Tags are named, coloured labels. In the Tags panel, click New tag, then give it a Name and Colour. Then tag objects in one of these ways:

Select them and click the tag button on the tag's row.
Pick a tag in the Tag field in the Properties panel.
Click the pen button on a tag's row to start the Tag tool, then click objects to tag them. Alt-click an object to pick up its tag. Press Esc when you're done.

Click a tag's eye button to hide or show everything with that tag. Hidden tags stay hidden in plans, elevations, sections and sheets too. Deleting a tag untags its objects. To colour the model by tag, choose By tag in the Shading chip (see Styles and scenes).

Group tags in folders

Click New tag folder and name it. Put a tag in a folder with the tag's Folder setting. Hiding a folder hides all its tags, and deleting a folder keeps them.

Show phases

Click Add phases in the Tags panel to make three tags: Existing, Demolish and New. Tag what's there, what's going and what's new, then pick Existing (the building as found), Proposed (the building as it will be) or All.

Purge unused

Edit → Purge unused clears out what nothing uses: the project's own finishes and skies that aren't in use, tags nothing carries (phase tags stay), empty tag folders and empty groups. It's one undo step, and it tells you what went.

Still stuck? Contact us, or ask in the app: Help → Contact support.