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In other drawing programs, I can draw separate things and then “Group” them so they behave as one. In particular, moving, rotating, and scaling automatically applies to everything rigidly.

The “Collections” in Blender 2.8 doesn’t do this.

Assigning parts to other parts as “Parent” causes it to re-interpret the position and scale relative to the new parent, rather than just making it follow the parent from now on.

Ray Mairlot
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JDługosz
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  • https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/47295/sketchup-like-components-case-study-is-it-in-or-even-feasible/47311#47311 – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Mar 18 '19 at 15:03
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    "“Collections” in Blender 2.8 doesn’t do this" it does. Same as in 2.79- you needed to create an instance of the group to make objects in it actually behave as one in 2.8 you have to instantiate collection. – Mr Zak Mar 18 '19 at 16:11
  • I wonder what collections are really for, if you can't use them to group objects, to move them together and use them as one big group. You still have to parent them to another object like an empty, which is clumsy and complicated and which I feel should have been the purpose of collections. – Markus Bawidamann Apr 05 '21 at 03:54

7 Answers7

6

Parent

enter image description here

You can select many objects first, choose the candidate parent last and then parent.

Please note Blender always has many options to achieve similar goals. There is the concept of Join and Blender Armature. This proposed answer will focus on Parent.

Parent menu has many options Control-P. Use the keystroke because Blender will give you more options this way

enter image description here

To remove the Parent with options press Alt-P

Those options may keep your original transformation. I believe the parent feature is able to do what you want. Object Keep Transform.

Parent and Group are two distinct concepts in Blender. So you may want to use Blender terminology.

Here is a video tutorial for creating a group and parenting. It may or may not be the same version of Blender you are using. You may choose a different tutorial on the topic of [Parent] which you like better. I just did a quick search.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2Q6KcSho48

or the manual

Parent Concept

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/editors/3dview/object/properties/relations/parents.html

Group Concept

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/editors/3dview/object/properties/relations/groups.html

atomicbezierslinger
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    Parent did not work; at least, not for grouping after the fact. When I assigned 'part' the parent of 'main body', it jumped to a new position and size; I assume it was re-interpreting the exiting numbers relative to the parent. When I "group" something, it should remain unchanged! Just, stay together for subsequent operations. – JDługosz Mar 18 '19 at 15:04
  • Try 5 different times and you will find it to work. – atomicbezierslinger Mar 18 '19 at 15:08
  • Again please do not casually use the word group in Blender. It will be confusing at points . – atomicbezierslinger Mar 18 '19 at 15:09
  • The "Group" feature you refer to appears to not be applicable to Version 2.8. I think turning off “Keep Transform” is what I was looking for — It's not in the Object menu, but the ctrl-P menu showed the same as yours. Thanks! – JDługosz Mar 18 '19 at 15:10
  • If you feel the question was answered please mark it as the answer. – atomicbezierslinger Mar 18 '19 at 15:15
  • No, I spoke to soon. Turning off Keep Transform in the pop-up menu actually un-parented the object. Toggling it again after re-setting the Parent property does not do anything at all; the object remains in a different position. – JDługosz Mar 18 '19 at 15:19
  • It would be best not to have a history of little mistakes to cloud your thinking. Start Fresh and forget the history. – atomicbezierslinger Mar 18 '19 at 15:21
  • Start with you original items without any parents in the proper location scale rotation. Then parent them all at once. Undo is available in Blender. In all likely hood the features of parent can do all you need. Experience will prove that. – atomicbezierslinger Mar 18 '19 at 15:28
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Blender 2.8x also gives the option of making a Collection Instance. Any collection can be called up as a Collection Instance: ShiftA add > Collection Instance > the collection of interest.

A Collection Instance shows up as an orange folder in the Outliner, with the collection it was created from as its 'Data'.

A Collection Instance is transformed as one object, and gives no direct access to its components.. they must be edited in the source 'Data' collection. Collection Instances can be nested. As with Object instances, alterations made to the source collection are reflected in all the instances, and they are cheap, computationally.

Robin Betts
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  • This does not move the original objects. – scriptfoo Aug 18 '21 at 10:04
  • @scriptfoo.. true, It makes instances of them, collectively locked to a new origin, (as many as you like) to be moved (wherever you like) together . What effect are you looking for, exactly? – Robin Betts Aug 18 '21 at 10:17
  • In my model, the original objects are used in different modifiers, for example in boolean operations of different types. But I guess that instances within such a Collection Instance can only be used together as a whole in a modifier? – scriptfoo Aug 19 '21 at 11:07
  • I've just tried it, with only the modified objects in the instanced collection, Boolean cutters etc. elsewhere. No problem yet.. but probably I'm not getting your case. maybe you can put up your case as a new question, if something's not working out, for you? – Robin Betts Aug 19 '21 at 11:23
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    Let there be some base object B. It has two modifiers: Union with an object U and Difference with an object D. I would like to move together what represent U and D. I create their two new instances via a single Collection Instance. But as these instances are in a common collection, I guess that I cannot use one in a union modifier and another in a difference modifier. – scriptfoo Aug 20 '21 at 17:56
  • @scriptfoo Ahhh.. True. Once in a Collection Instance, they are considered one object. It works to parent them both to an Empty, though.. would that do? – Robin Betts Aug 20 '21 at 18:37
2

Just in case anyone else comes looking for the same thing.

  1. Create an empty.
  2. Size the empty to encase your objects.
  3. Parent all objects to the group.
  4. In the outliner make all objects except for the empty non selectable.

Items now act as what most people would consider a group. (for the most part)

EDIT

Found this addon does what you want.

Robert Gützkow
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hardwire666
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  • "Create an empty [...] Parent all objects to the group", I assume you meant "parent all objects to the empty" else please explain where does this group come from. – mins May 21 '22 at 02:41
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I tried everyone's suggestions. They did not work for me. However, I figured it out.

  1. Click on all the objects you want in a group
  2. Object Tab
  3. Bool Tool > Union (could take a while)

Hopefully this works for others.

Lukasz-40sth
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Yogert
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If you find that your linked objects are separating or not behaving how you want them to, try turning off proportional editing. I had the same issue but I've managed to figure it out.

Alex
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Change from Scene Collection to Scene on the top right and you can drag and drop objects into your main object just like with Blender 2.79.

Duarte Farrajota Ramos
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Frank
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Same problem: How to group objects in blender so they behave like am used to in coreldraw(the usuals scaling,translation and ...)? turned out parenting was the apparent solution after jumping on a googling adventure. So I decided parenting wasn't the solution well because I wanted to, sadly it meant I always needed to select one object before all others start misbehaving according to my wishes(scaling,transla...).

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: After grouping a set of objects with Ctrl +G I selected one object in the group and then Shift + G -> Group -> my_group_name to select all the other objects in the group and you wouldn't believe it, I discovered my purpose. I finally realised my destiny was to group objects in blender, the universe always finds a way to put things in place at the right moment.

last night I sardined 1,000 sceptres(meshes) and you wouldn't believe it they grouped like magic. today I hope to make 3000 if nobody stops me... The sky is the limit

linker
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