Selections across multiple groups + why so many groups

[lexington]

I'm coming from using Adobe programs for 16 years. There are a lot of things that I love about the Affinity Suite, and many of the Adobe functions that I'm used to seem to be present in some form (except live trace, which was in my top three Illustrator faves and something I'm really missing here!).

I'm really hung up on adjusting to the layers/groups/curves in Designer. Having dug through the forums, I'm starting to understand how they differ....but I'm losing my mind trying to figure out a few things. Hoping for some insight here:

1) When I open an AI file, a layer might have dozens of groups, and curves are nested within each group. Is there a way to collect all the individual groups just put everything into one? I can't seem to select shapes or curve segments without flipping through all the groups. I'm sure there's something I'm missing.

2) With a million individual groups, how can I select objects from multiple groups? Say group A is a dozen squares, all of which are further nested in one curves layer. Group B is a dozen circles, also further nested as a curves layer. Can I select one square and one circle at the same time so that I can copy both to a new layer/group? Can I do it without having to select each individual node? 

Thank you!

 

[loukash]

40 minutes ago, lexington said:

When I open an AI file

… you are actually not opening the AI file but the PDF document saved within for compatibility and portability reasons. You will see the same thing if you export (save) an AI document as PDF and open it in AI; and while saving, you will also see a warning that you're losing native AI editability by saving as PDF…

The real Illustrator format is proprietary. Only Illustrator can read it.

[Ray S.]

Also try the "Select same..." and "Select Object..." Features under the Select-Menu.

[lexington]

6 hours ago, Ray S. said:

Also try the "Select same..." and "Select Object..." Features under the Select-Menu.

@Ray S. Thank you for this suggestion – and the roundabout reminder to update to 1.9 as I couldn't find those options in the Select Menu. I think these options might help with some of my confusion.