Group objects

[P3D]

When preparing multiple parts for print, quite often, one wants to rotate several objects at once - right now, this only rotates each object, but as I see it, there is no way to “group” the parts and rotate them together.

A “grouping” option would also be really useful for object duplication - if you want to fill the whole print plate, and the automatic placement doesn’t do what you want, right now painstakingly placing every single object is what you have to do. With grouping, one could make a working “layout” of several parts and the duplicate it until the print plate is full, only having to manually place the groups, and not every single part.

This would save so much time - please consider implementing this soon!

[JohnHue]

This falls in the same group of requests as these two :

Duplicate in Preform scattering issue

So I have placed many of these tiny lenses into position and want to select all of them and duplicate and move into position so I get nice rows. The problem is when I select them all and hit ctrl + D it scatters the duplicates everywhere as opposed to keeping them in the same position. Now I understand why it’s done this way, though can Preform add an alternative duplicate function that keeps position data? so like in Maya ctrl + shift + D as a special alternative duplicate? Otherwise placing t…

[PreForm] Keep layout when importing or copying

Dear all, I think this has been discussed already but I can’t seem to find the thread… When dealing with a group of parts, either small similar parts or a group of different parts going together, it would be great if we could lay them out and be able to copy this layout. Currently the bevaviour is as follow : [image] Group of parts [image] Select “duplicate” [image] Result after selecting duplicate [Untitled] Expected result The behavior is the same when importing a .form file. We…

Namely “making all Preform tools able to work on “groups” of parts”

This has been asked and proposed for a long while, I really hope Formlabs gets their minds to it soon.

[P3D]

Thanks for posting those threads!

@Formlabs: Replies like “you can do it in Meshmixer” do not help at all, as in creating a dense layout of complicated parts, the Feedback PreForm provides for printability is essential.

[BenFrantzDale]

Would it suffice if the grouping were short-lived to the current selection, or would you only want it be able to make a group that lives through changes in selection and is saved with the file (like Illustrator and Inkscape can do, for example)?

[JohnHue]

Short-lived for the current selection would definitely work for me and would solve some “issues” right away, although with the newly added “replace” functionality my .form files will have a much longer lifetime and in that case a selection that is saved with the file and can be called back is indeed very interesting and would make even more sense !

[P3D]

Same here - short-lived would already be extremely useful, a full-fledged grouping/ungrouping functionality would be even more awesome (and also solve the problem how to keep the existing “rotate every object selected around its own axis of rotation” feature)

[P3D]

Oh, and while we are at it: One feature that would also save so much time would be to be able to make dependent copies, so that if you change the support points, orientation etc. for one part, it will automatically be applied to the other parts.

[JohnHue]

Hi Ben, since the release of PreForm 3 there have been a lot of amazing new feature (including the often requested mirror feature) but no news about grouping, any news on that ? I still regularly encounter situations where this would be useful.