In this chapter, we're going to look at groups and blocks and the difference between the two.
Some people get a bit confused between the two, but each one has a specific use case and we'll look
at those now and compare them.
So for this chapter, if you want to follow along, we're going to be using a built in zero one model
that's included in the resources.
We've used this before.
And as I said before, if you open it and it looks something like this.
If you haven't gone over layouts and viewports and things yet, don't worry about it.
Just click on down here where it says model.
You want it to be a black background and look like this.
Okay?
So once you've got this open, you can follow along if you wish these basic modules.
Again, as I've said before, you can just sit back and watch them.
They are about teaching the concepts, not necessarily creating something.
So feel free to sit back and watch these.
And in in your actual modeling lesson, you'll put it into practice.
Okay, so let's look at groups first now.
Supposing I wanted to change these lights.
These are lights, by the way, these orange components in this building layout.
So in each room, you've got a set of lights.
Now, maybe I wanted to do something with them.
And every time I wanted to change them.
I had to select every light.
Okay.
Now we've looked at selection tools.
There's quick ways of doing it.
It might be you could just right click it, select similar.
That's worked in this case.
So each time we wanted to do it, we could do that, select similar, but that doesn't always work.
And sometimes it's more complex than that, or sometimes you might not want every single light, so
it might be another building with lights and it select those as well.
So how can we get around that if every time we want to do a command on all these lights, we have to
select them all?
Well, we can create what's known as groups.
Okay, so if I just do select similar ones to select them.
So once I've selected all the objects I want, if I know I'm going to select those again multiple times
to do different commands on there.
Now, probably best creating a group out of them.
And I can do that by right clicking and going down.
You'll see group and it is just a group command.
Okay, so I can select that.
And now it will stay down here.
22 found.
An unnamed group has been created.
Okay.
And now when I click just one of them, it selects them all.
And I can do I can change things.
I can do various things on here and I can put them on different layers.
I can change the colors and it affects all those objects in one go because I've made them a group.
And I can leave them like that.
I can leave them in the drawing as a group if I know I'm going to use it over and over.
I could just leave out and if I right click now and go to group, I can get other options so I can ungroup
them, which will put them back to individual items.
I can click on Add to group.
Maybe I wanted to add that to the group for some reason.
I don't know.
I'll just get that I can add objects to it.
Okay.
Or I can remove if I wanted to remove these two, say I can remove them from the group.
And you end up with this group that stays in my drawing.
And every time I want to check to select those same objects, I can do it.
Maybe I wanted to do it with the doors, so I'll try to select similar.
Okay.
And I'll add those to a group.
Okay.
And now each time I want to select the doors, I can just click one and it's a group.
But it's not a permanent thing.
It's not an item that remains.
They all remain individual items.
It's just a selection, a way of selecting multiple objects.
And you'll see up here, if I was to click on the doors, they're all are.
It's only selected these arcs, by the way.
It's not selected select some of didn't select these.
Okay.
But it's saying there is nine arcs in this group.
And if I wanted to do things like change the color of them, I could I could change them all to yellow.
I could put them on different line types, all sorts of things.
So that's group.
It's just a way of quickly selecting multiple objects over and over again without selecting them.
And if they remain individual objects, that's the important thing to remember.
They remain individual objects themselves.
And it's just a group really is a temporary thing you would do.
Okay.
And you can ungroup them at any time.
So that's groups is there just to help you select multiple objects.
So what they're now blocks.
Okay.
We've got some blocks in this drawing.
These lights here, these are blocks.
If we look at a light and I'm just going to copy one out so we can play about with it.
If I was to click this object, if you look at it first, you can see it's four lines.
We've got two short lines on the end and then the two longer lines.
But if I click on one of these lines, it selects a whole thing.
Okay?
That's because it is a block.
Now it looks like it's doing the same as what our group did.
Maybe we've just grouped these four lines, but a block is different.
A block is an actual one object.
If I click this, it doesn't say four lines, but it would if we'd grouped them.
It says block reference.
It's turned into one object and you do this If there is an item that you want multiple instances of
in your drawing.
Okay, Then you create a block.
And the beauty of a block is you can double click that block, okay?
And it'll ask you to edit it.
So this is a list of all the blocks in the drawing.
You can select the light.
And what I'm going to do now is I'm just going to draw a circle.
I'm just going to put a circle like that.
Okay.
For whatever reason, I'm going to put a circle there and I'm going to close that and it will ask me,
Do you want to save it?
So I'm going to save it to the block.
Okay.
And now when we click it again, it's just selecting all the objects as a block.
We've edited that block and we've added that circle.
But if we look at all these now, okay, it's done the same and you can see where we've mirrored the
block is where it's put it on the other side.
So you can see a block is a is one object that you use multiple times and by and if you want to change
it, you can just change one instance of it and it will change all the other blocks.
So that's the power of blocks and we tend to use blocks for things like this where it's symbols.
If you add some tables or chairs, they would be a block, for instance, and you'd have multiple instances
of that block.
So a group to recap is a collection of objects.
It's just an ease of selection thing, really.
It's just allows you to select the same groups of objects over and over just by gathering them together
or grouping them together, should I say.
Whereas a block is an actual physical item.
It's one item that you've created and saved as a whole.
So you've put all those lines and circles together as one object and it is just one object.
And if you were to select four, it would say you've selected four blocks.
It wouldn't say you've selected 18 lines, for instance.
So that is the difference.
And there's all sorts of things you can do with blocks.
But the purpose of this is just to outline what they are and the difference between blocks and groups.
And again, the best way you're going to learn this is just by using them, which you will do in the
courses.
So this is an overview and then you'll see a use case for it as you're doing the modeling.
But that's it basically for this lesson, it's just an overview of what a block is and what a group
is.
And hopefully you now know the difference.
If not, you might need to watch again.
But hopefully that was clear enough.