Grouping items on a folio
Some things on a folio belong together: a picture and its caption, a symbol with a frame drawn round it, a block of symbols with the notes that explain them. Without groups they have to be selected piece by piece every time they move or are copied, and it is easy to leave one behind.
Grouper (Group) ties selected items together so that they select, move, copy and delete as one. Dégrouper (Ungroup) undoes it. This was asked for in issue #349 and on the forum (#2467, #356), and proposed in discussion #1070.
Menu names are given in French, as QElectroTech shows them until the translations are updated, with an English gloss in italics.
Status: pending. Everything on this page describes PR #1074, not yet merged. Nothing here works until that lands — check the PR before trying any of this against your own build. This page will drop this notice once it does.
1. Making a group
- Select two or more items. Any mix of these can be grouped:
- symbols,
- free texts,
- shapes (lines, rectangles, ellipses, polygons),
- pictures.
- Choose Édition ▸ Grouper (Edit ▸ Group). It is also in the right-click menu of the selection, and in command search (Ctrl+Shift+M, type "grouper").
Grouper is greyed out when the selection is fewer than two items, or is already exactly one group.
Wires are never part of a group. They are drawn between symbols, so they follow their symbols when the group moves, exactly as they do today.
2. Working with a group
| You do | What happens |
|---|---|
| Click any member | the whole group is selected |
| Drag a member | the whole group moves |
| Arrow keys, with the group selected | the whole group moves |
| Draw a selection rectangle that touches part of a group | the whole group is selected when you release the mouse |
| Ctrl+click a member of a selected group | the whole group leaves the selection, as a single item would |
| Ctrl+click a member of an unselected group | the whole group joins the selection |
| Copy, cut, Delete | act on the whole group |
| Shift+Space, Pivoter le groupe (rotate as group) | the whole group turns 90° round its centre, keeping its layout |
| Space, Pivoter (rotate) | each member turns where it stands, as for any selection |
| Paste | the copy is a new group of its own, separate from the original |
| Duplicate a folio | each group on it becomes a new group on the copy |
Clicking a member of a group that is already selected keeps the whole group selected.
Grouping groups merges them. Select a group and another item (or another group) and choose Grouper: the result is one group holding all of them. There are no groups inside groups.
3. Ungrouping
Select a group, or any member of it, and choose Édition ▸ Dégrouper (Edit ▸ Ungroup), also in the right-click menu and command search. Every member becomes a separate item again, and nothing moves.
Both commands are undoable. Undoing Dégrouper restores exactly the groups there were before, not new ones.
Neither command has a default shortcut (Ctrl+G is already go to element). You can assign one under Configurer QElectroTech ▸ Raccourcis (Settings ▸ Shortcuts), in the Éditeur de schémas group.
4. In the project file
Each grouped item carries one extra attribute, group, holding the group's
id; members of the same group share the id. Nothing else in the file
changes:
- A project without groups saves exactly as it did before, byte for byte.
- An older version of QElectroTech opens a project with groups, shows every item, and simply ignores the grouping. If it saves the project, the groups are lost.
Groups are also recorded in the project database (a group_uuid column on
the element, shape, free-text and picture tables), so a query or script can
find which items belong together. See
The project database.
5. Not included yet
Planned in discussion #1070, not built:
- Editing one member without ungrouping. For now, ungroup, edit, and group again.
- Space rotating a group as a unit. Today Space turns each member in place; use Shift+Space (Pivoter le groupe) to turn the group as a whole.
- Nested groups.
- Locked items. A locked member is not treated specially: it stays where it is while the rest of its group moves.
- Groups in the symbol editor (element editor).
Grouper les textes sélectionnés (group the selected texts), which groups the texts of one symbol, is a different, older feature and is not affected.
See also
- Aligning items — putting symbols back on the grid
- Templates — saving a set of items for reuse: select them and use Créer un template in the right-click menu
- Mouse modifiers — what Ctrl and Shift change while you select and drag
- The project database — the tables a query or script can read
Getting Started
🌐 Languages — English · Français · Deutsch
Guides
Conductors — wire properties, what feeds which export, and cables
Printing and exporting — paper, PDF, images, and what each path does differently
Linking elements — master, slave, terminal
PLC modules — I/O tables and linking a wire to a specific point
Using the element editor — drawing tools, saving, checks
Grid size and element size — why symbols aren't all the same scale
Preferences reference — what each settings page does
Keyboard-only control — mouseless QET, and what still needs a mouse
Mouse modifiers — what Shift, Ctrl and Alt change while you drag
Aligning items — snap symbols back to the grid (pending)
Grouping items — select, move and copy several items as one (pending)
Finding your place on a folio — go to a cell like B13 or 4-B7, keep the headers in sight, show the cell limits
Drawing faster — place without dragging, the S shortcut bar, command search, gestures
Managing collections — folders, writability, building your own shortlist
Templates — reusable multi-element blocks, and why clicking one does nothing
Search & Replace — bulk property changes
Building a nomenclature query — the BOM/summary table builder
Linking wires across pages — folio reports
Variables & formulas — %f, %{label}, sequences
Auto-numbering — schemes, sequences, freezing
Terminal strips — strips, levels, bridges
Title block templates — the .titleblock format
Importing EPLAN parts (.edz) — EPLAN Data Portal
DXF import & export — two unrelated features, one format; command-line export and layers (pending)
The project database — the in-memory SQLite cache
Development
Automating QET — CLI, XML formats, external tools
CLI Reference — command line usage
JavaScript Scripting — --run, geometry editing, undo
MCP server — let an AI assistant read, verify and edit projects
Vision — proposal, under discussion
