What is the difference between Layers and Groups?

[hawk]

They seem to do the same thing.

[MattP]

Basically, they're both containers, but Layers are a way of controlling selection more easily. If you have a number of layers with objects in them you can click their children without the click forcing selection of the layer. Whereas with Groups if you click you'll select the group, not the children. Also you can turn off 'Edit all layers' (bottom left button in the Layers panel) and now you'll only be able to select objects within the current layer - irrespective of whether there are things in front of that layer or not.

 

Hope that makes some sense :)

Matt

[hawk]

Thanks! You're always so helpful. I just noticed that I couldn't select my objects properly (because I had created a group instead of a layer).

 

Shouldn't there be a keyboard shortcut for creating a new vector layer or is there and I just don't see it? (there's Layer -> New Pixel Layer ⇧⌘N in the menu but not for normal layers)

[MattP]

You're quite right about the missing shortcut - I think that's a bit of an oversight and we should add that, thank you! :)

[hawk]

Thanks! Good luck finding a key-combination!

 

⌥⌘N seems to be unused.