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Finding objects in groups


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My more complicated drawings use lots of groups and nested groups. Finding where an object is located is sometimes rather tricky. When I click in the drawing on the grouped object, I can continue to click to drill down to the object that is several levels down in a group. But in the layers navigator the indication is not very clear.

 

If all groups are collapsed, I pretty much have to open all of them to figure out which object I just selected in the drawing. I do name my objects but even then, it is still taking too much time. It would be great if the grouped object can more more clearly highlighted and possibly brought into focus so that all I have to do is to click it open and any one of the nested object till the one I am targeting.

 

Hope my description is clear...

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joost,

 

I'm not sure if this is something that would help you in your situation but I often use the contextual menu (control + click or right click if you use a two button mouse). If you have an object selected and then you command + click on an object you will get a contextual menu and it has the option to "Find in the Layers Panel" which will take you directly to where it is in the Layers Panel. I hope it helps.

 

Hokusai

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Hokusai, that does help but I would like to avoid the right click, go down to menu item, select.  When selecting the outer most object, the layers navigator does highlight the object but the highlight is so subtle I cannot not see it unless the room I am working in as quite dark.  I guess I just want that highlight to be more substantial.  

 

But for now, the menu gets me where i need to be if I cannot see the highlight. Thanks.

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joost,

 

I'm glad that it helped. I know what you mean about the highlight being too subtle and I agree, it is too light or thin. I too have problems when I select multiple items and it contains items that are stacked on top of each other, it is very difficult to see whether or not objects that are inside have been selected or not. The only sure way for me to know (as it works now) is to check the Layers Panel but I too would prefer it if there was a way to have a stronger highlight line or a line that was more clearly noticeable. Maybe MEB or MattP has a possible solution?

 

Hokusai

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  • Staff

We're going to make it so that the layers panel has a mode which will automatically scroll and expand the tree to show the currently selected item, every time you select something (togglable on/off, obviously). Hopefully that should make it much easier to see what's going on. We could also look at making the highlighting a bit less subtle?

 

Hope that'll be okay? :)

Matt

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  • 2 weeks later...

Joost and Matt,

 

Something I noticed 2 days ago on this which might also help.  For some reason the current method of highlighting the selected object is non-consistent.  On the 14th there was no highlight except for the actual layer.  The upper left image shows that the parent group "Band" is not highlighted at all.  When collapsed, as shown in the lower left image, there is no way to know a selection has been made of an object in the group "Band".  Possibly this is also what Joost is seeing.

 

Today in the same drawing, same version of AD (1.2.1.2787) the parent group "Band" is highlighted, not a lot but at least you can tell even when collapsed the group can be determined.

 

post-2932-0-18222900-1434463480_thumb.jpg

iMac (27-inch, Late 2009) with macOS Sierra

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  • 1 month later...

I've seen emails about not being able to tell which layer is selected, above is a note I wrote earlier.  I just found the same situation again and did some playing.  This drawing has over a hundred layers in it and after creating a shape I noticed that the top level of the group in which I had just created a shape was not highlighted.

 

post-2932-0-55753000-1439247458_thumb.jpg

 

post-2932-0-80095400-1439247745_thumb.jpg

 

I tried playing with hiding and unhiding the layers in the group.  With no change.

 

post-2932-0-23954500-1439247486_thumb.jpg

 

So I kept watch to see when it started being highlighted.  It happened when I clicked on "Convert to curves".  I can use the history to go back and forth, the top layer highlights and then unhighlights.

 

post-2932-0-87486000-1439247895_thumb.jpg

 

I notice in the example I listed in June, the layer I'd created was an Ellipse when not highlighting and a Curve when it is highlighted.  Just like in this example.  Somehow that seems to trigger the highlighting/non-highlighting of the upper level layer.

 

Have you been able to find out what's causing this?  Not having the top layer highlighted really makes it hard to locate a layer that's buried.

iMac (27-inch, Late 2009) with macOS Sierra

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