How to group objects?

A

AWRRBob

New member
I have used the build-a-warehouse series from Dave Snow, and it is really neat. However, when I add overhead doors and personnel doors and then move the warehouse the doors stay put. Is there anyway to group these objects so they remain as a single unit? The alternative is to place the warehouse where I want it then add the other objects, but you know...
Bob Burke
 
Could use the copy and paste tool in "Tools" (F5) in surveyor. There are options available as to what can be copied and pasted. example: track, objects textures, height.

1.Highlight the red icon (to copy) then hold the left mouse button and drag the mouse pointer over the warehouse. A white line "box" will appear and extend when you click and drag over the warehouse.
2.Now highlight the green icon (to paste) and mouse left click where the warehouse is to go. Your warehouse is moved all in one piece.
3. Which ever icon is highlighted the objects and or textures will be pasted. When the icon is not highlighted, example "track", this will not be pasted.
4.If there are objects already placed on the baseboard in the same area where"pasting" it will remove those objects, however just moving them a small distance from the area temporarily prior to pasting is a way round it.

I recommend doing a trial run on a piece of bare baseboard to see how the tools works. The copy/paste is a very handy tool to use.
 
Last edited:
ARhian7 said:
Could use the copy and paste tool in "Tools" (F5) in surveyor. There are options available as to what can be copied and pasted. example: track, objects textures, height.

1.Highlight the red icon (to copy) then hold the left mouse button and drag the mouse pointer over the warehouse. A white line "box" will appear and extend when you click and drag over the warehouse.
2.Now highlight the green icon (to paste) and mouse left click where the warehouse is to go. Your warehouse is moved all in one piece.
3. Which ever icon is highlighted the objects and or textures will be pasted. When the icon is not highlighted, example "track", this will not be pasted.
4.If there are objects already placed on the baseboard in the same area where"pasting" it will remove those objects, however just moving them a small distance from the area temporarily prior to pasting is a way round it.

I recommend doing a trial run on a piece of bare baseboard to see how the tools works. The copy/paste is a very handy tool to use.
Click to expand...

I just tried that ARhian, and it didn't work. still lost the doors when moving. The copy tool uses a fixed position for the white line box so I had to include a large area to copy. Thanks for the suggestion though!
 
AWRRBob said:
I just tried that ARhian, and it didn't work. still lost the doors when moving. The copy tool uses a fixed position for the white line box so I had to include a large area to copy. Thanks for the suggestion though!
Click to expand...

AWRRBob

I just tried the copy/paste thing myself, using davesnow "build-a-whatever" assets. It works perfectly.

Realise that some of these assets are of Kind "scenery", others are splines and these are of Kind "track" (even if they look like buildings not railroad tracks). If you have a group that includes both Scenery and Track type objects, you need to activate both the "objects" and "track" icons, otherwise you will not copy/paste everything within the selection area. I suspect this is what happened when you tried it and it didn't include the doors.

Another feature you may have missed is that you can change the orientation of the paste operation using the little compass dial. I think it's limited to 90, 180 and 270 degree rotations, but it's still useful when you're wanting to randomize the pasted objects a little.

I urge you to try it again.

~ Deane
 
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Yes, the line is not flexible.

Could you give the kuid's of the overhead and personnel doors you are using please. I downloaded some random overhead doors davesnow made, plopped them down then copied and pasted and they pasted fine. But of course these were probably not the ones you are using.
 
Dinorius_Redundicus said:
AWRRBob

I just tried the copy/paste thing myself, using davesnow "build-a-whatever" assets. It works perfectly.

Realise that some of these assets are of Kind "scenery", others are splines and these are of Kind "track" (even if they look like buildings not railroad tracks). If you have a group that includes both Scenery and Track type objects, you need to activate both the "objects" and "track" icons, otherwise you will not copy/paste everything within the selection area. I suspect this is what happened when you tried it and it didn't include the doors.

Another feature you may have missed is that you can change the orientation of the paste operation using the little compass dial. I think it's limited to 90, 180 and 270 degree rotations, but it's still useful when you're wanting to randomize the pasted objects a little.

I urge you to try it again.

OK Deane, I'll try it again. Thanks!
Click to expand...
 
ARhian7 said:
Yes, the line is not flexible.

Could you give the kuid's of the overhead and personnel doors you are using please. I downloaded some random overhead doors davesnow made, plopped them down then copied and pasted and they pasted fine. But of course these were probably not the ones you are using.
Click to expand...

Ok, I'll check in the DLS.
 
Dinorius_Redundicus said:
AWRRBob

I just tried the copy/paste thing myself, using davesnow "build-a-whatever" assets. It works perfectly.

Realise that some of these assets are of Kind "scenery", others are splines and these are of Kind "track" (even if they look like buildings not railroad tracks). If you have a group that includes both Scenery and Track type objects, you need to activate both the "objects" and "track" icons, otherwise you will not copy/paste everything within the selection area. I suspect this is what happened when you tried it and it didn't include the doors.

Another feature you may have missed is that you can change the orientation of the paste operation using the little compass dial. I think it's limited to 90, 180 and 270 degree rotations, but it's still useful when you're wanting to randomize the pasted objects a little.

I urge you to try it again.

Still no luck. Pasted as 'Object', but doors stay while warehouse is rotated.
Click to expand...
 
ARhian7 said:
Yes, the line is not flexible.

Could you give the kuid's of the overhead and personnel doors you are using please. I downloaded some random overhead doors davesnow made, plopped them down then copied and pasted and they pasted fine. But of course these were probably not the ones you are using.
Click to expand...

The kuid's didn't show in the DLS.
 
AWRRBob said:
The kuid's didn't show in the DLS.
Click to expand...

..but they must at least be installed on your computer, since you used them. So you must be able to see them listed in Content Manager and quote what they are. Can you do that please? If we can find the same kuids, then we can see how they behave in a copy/paste operation. It will help us understand whether your problems are with the objects or the copy/paste function. So, please tell us the kuid numbers of all the objects in the group.
 
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Dinorius_Redundicus said:
..but they must at least be installed on your computer, since you used them. So you must be able to see them listed in Content Manager and quote what they are. Can you do that please? If we can find the same kuids, then we can see how they behave in a copy/paste operation. It will help us understand whether your problems are with the objects or the copy/paste function. So, please tell us the kuid numbers of all the objects in the group.
Click to expand...
Ok, found them in My Content. The overhead doors are kuid 101522; personnel door is 101517. DES kuid is 101046. Metal building is 101496. Thanks!
Bob
 
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I don't know how those assets got into your "My Content" list, since none of them are your own kuids. In any case, I found them on the DLS and downloaded them.

They are all just Kind Scenery buildings, not splines, so the Copy/Paste function only needs the "Objects" button active. Here is the metal building with the 2 types of door aligned to its front wall. See also my Copy/Paste set-up, including a selection box around the group;

​
AI7yZbM.jpg



And this is the result of doing a paste operation (to the right of the original group, with orientation unchanged) and a second paste rotated 90 degrees clockwise;

​
kXp14Xd.jpg



It all works. The only question is; can you see what you were doing wrong?


.​
 
Last edited:
Dinorius_Redundicus said:
I don't know how those assets got into your "My Content" list, since none of them are your own kuids. In any case, I found them on the DLS and downloaded them.

They are all just Kind Scenery buildings, not splines, so the Copy/Paste function only needs the "Objects" button active. Here is the metal building with the 2 types of door aligned to its front wall. See also my Copy/Paste set-up, including a selection box around the group;

​
AI7yZbM.jpg



And this is the result of doing a paste operation (to the right of the original group, with orientation unchanged) and a second paste rotated 90 degrees clockwise;

​
kXp14Xd.jpg



It all works. The only question is; can you see what you were doing wrong?

I don't know how you got the selection box centered around the object. The rotation tool doesn't move to select, only to paste. I have to include a large area because the selection is at an angle to the object (steel building). Lemme try again...​
Click to expand...
 
AWRRBob said:
I don't know how you got the selection box centered around the object. The rotation tool doesn't move to select, only to paste. I have to include a large area because the selection is at an angle to the object (steel building). Lemme try again...​
Click to expand...

My first screenshot showed where I had drawn my selection box to begin the copy/paste. The second screenshot was taken after I had applied a 90 degree clockwise rotation and made my second paste.

My selection box is only centred neatly around the group because the group happens to be aligned with the Trainz ground grid. If I had placed the group at an angle to the grid, then I too would have needed to draw a bigger selection box in order to include all the objects. The cut/paste function only operates on rectangular areas of the grid, regardless of the object orientations. That’s the reason why the rotation tool is limited to increments of 90 degrees.

So if the asset group happens to be angled relative to the grid, the copy/paste operation will preserve that relative angle. If you choose to rotate it while pasting, it can only change the pasting angle in 90 degree increments, so the group will never become aligned with the grid unless it was already aligned to begin with.

Having said all that, I am still struggling to understand how you could have only pasted the building and left the doors behind. It implies you somehow managed to only include the building in your selection box and not the doors (?). That must be difficult to do if the doors are butted right up against the walls of the building. I thought it was pretty obvious that the selection box needs to surround everything that you want to include in a group.
 
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Deane you beat me to it I had the following ready to submit when I took my coffee break:

Obviously he "cheated" and placed the object so it aligned to the grid. Now my question to Deane is: I want the "grouped warehouse" to align with other scenery objects and parallel a track line that runs in a direction that's about 43 deg East of North (043 deg True) and at a distance 6m from it. I don't see how you do that with the copy/paste. And if I want multiple copies at various locations and angles to align with other stuff - how do you do that? Can I copy it to another route and use at any position and orientation?

As it stands now you can paste it but if you try to move it a few meters and/or rotate to anything other than multiples of 90 deg you have to translate and rotate each part individually.

This is something I brought up in a reply to a post Tony H. made about using multiple assets to form larger industry complexes. We need a real group/ungroup feature in Surveyor. I described a group/ungroup creation tool in a CAD program I use a lot that creats what it calls figures that are collections of objects that can be handled as a single unit that any of the built-in tools can work with. I can group figures in to other figures and ungroup as needed. Oh did I mention that the figure "definition" can be named and saved as an asset so it can be used on any drawing or scene I'm working on.

Bob Pearson
 
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Hi Bobb

I think after seeing how programs like 3ds Max, Blender, Autocad and the like, highlight selected objects, manipulate groups of objects etc in such natural and intuitive ways, we expect every program to be the same. Then we enter Trainz and find that objects don’t auto-brighten when we select them, they don’t get added to a group simply by holding the Shift key when clicking on them and the world often behaves as if distance is quantized in 5m or 10m chunks and angles are quantized in 90 degree increments. It creates frustration and confusion when the game world doesn’t behave as you expect. I understand the feeling. That’s why I’m patiently and openly walking through the copy/paste thing with AWRRBob who I think might be relatively new to Trainz.

~ Deane with 1 n.
 
Dinorius_Redundicus said:
My first screenshot showed where I had drawn my selection box to begin the copy/paste. The second screenshot was taken after I had applied a 90 degree clockwise rotation and made my second paste.

My selection box is only centred neatly around the group because the group happens to be aligned with the Trainz ground grid. If I had placed the group at an angle to the grid, then I too would have needed to draw a bigger selection box in order to include all the objects. The cut/paste function only operates on rectangular areas of the grid, regardless of the object orientations. That’s the reason why the rotation tool is limited to increments of 90 degrees.

So if the asset group happens to be angled relative to the grid, the copy/paste operation will preserve that relative angle. If you choose to rotate it while pasting, it can only change the pasting angle in 90 degree increments, so the group will never become aligned with the grid unless it was already aligned to begin with.

Having said all that, I am still struggling to understand how you could have only pasted the building and left the doors behind. It implies you somehow managed to only include the building in your selection box and not the doors (?). That must be difficult to do if the doors are butted right up against the walls of the building. I thought it was pretty obvious that the selection box needs to surround everything that you want to include in a group.
I did what you did in the screen shots. The doors were installed on the steel building. I clicked the object button, then the copy, then the paste. Then I re-did it clicking the copy button, then the object button, then paste. Still doesn't work. Maybe my computer is to weak...I'll keep trying.
Click to expand...
 
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