Why Dimensions and Zones can't be part of a group

[Greg Kmethy]

You have probably noticed that Dimensions and Zones can't be part of a group but you were wondering why.

This is because these elements almost always have relation to other elements (dimensions belong to walls or other elements, zones are relative to walls), and it is not clear how they are supposed to work, if they are part of a group, but their "parent" element (to which they relate) isn't - e.g. should the link break if you move the dimension as a part of a group, but not the wall? There could be anomalies in how they behave as a part of a group, so the design decision was that they can't be grouped.

However Dimensions and Zones can be part of a Hotlink. As long as the Hotlink is active, they look and behave like groups. (None of them can be edited in the host file. They can be edited individually in the module file.) Then when you break the Hotlink of the Module, all the elements of the module will be grouped into one hierarchically organized group except the Zones and the Dimensions. These will not be part of the group. But all the other elements will create one group.

This is a simple example below to show how the elements of several types are organized into groups when they originate from the same Module.

Let's see the Module in a separate instance of ARCHICAD:

Only the four walls are organized into a group.

When this file is hotlinked as a module into the host file, all the elements are "grouped" together. (However, suspend groups command does not enable the editing of them.)

When you break the hotlink of the Module, Zones and Dimensions "fall out" of the group, while other elements (four walls and a label) stay part of it:

After ungrouping you can see the hierarchical structure of the group: there was a subgroup of the four walls in the group. This subgroup still stays a group: