Grouping and Hierarchies

Use

The Scene panel displays all objects in the current scene in a tree-view hierarchy including bone, light, camera, material, part, and animation objects.

Windows hierarchy conventions apply to the panel. For example, if you select an object’s parent checkbox, all child objects are also selected. However, pressing CTRL and selecting a parent checkbox, selects only that object.

If an object contains subobjects (“child” objects), a plus sign [+] appears next to the “parent” object. You can expand the parent objects and materials to show subobjects by clicking the plus sign [+]. Alternatively, you can collapse an object to hide its subobjects in the Scene tree by clicking on the minus sign [-].

You can create groups of objects; this function is useful for animation and assembly files. You can also collapse object hierarchies into a single mesh. If you collapse individual objects that are located within containing folders, all the objects are collapsed into a single mesh and are given an automatically generated name in the 3D Objects list. If you select a folder to collapse, everything within that folder is collapsed into a single mesh, and the name of the folder remains the same.

Activities

Creating a Group

  1. Select the objects you want to group and do one of the following:

    • Right click in the 3D Objects list or Parts panel

    • Right-click in the viewport.

  2. Do one of the following:

    • Click Create Group. A new group object is created containing the selected objects.

    • Click Attach to Group and click the object under which you wish the objects to be grouped. The selected objects are grouped under the object on which you clicked.

Separating a Group

  1. Select the group in the viewport, 3D Objects list, or Parts panel.

  2. Right-click and select Ungroup.

Attaching Objects to an Existing Group

  1. Select the objects that you wish to attach to a group, and do one of the following:

    • Right click in the 3D Objects list or Parts panel

    • Right-click in the viewport.

  2. Select Attach to Group and click the group into which you want to attach the objects. The selected objects are added to the group on which you clicked.

Detaching Objects from a Group

  1. Select the objects you wish to detach and right-click in the 3D Objects list or Parts panel.

  2. Select Detach from Group.

Deleting a Group

Right-click the group in the 3D Objects list or Parts panel and select Delete.

Collapsing an Object Hierarchy

Do one of the following:

  • Select the objects that you want to collapse within their containing folder in the 3D Objects list.

  • Select the folder in the 3D Objects list for which you want to collapse its objects.

  • Right-click over one of the selected objects and select Start of the navigation pathTools Next navigation step Collapse HierarchyEnd of the navigation path.

  • In the Collapse window, make your selections for the hidden nodes, and click OK.