Participant

Answered

Bounding box includes invisible objects in group?

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
February 26, 2025
4 replies
513 views

Hi,

So I've noticed that my bounding box on Illustrator has been acting a little odd on my work computer.

Example; I select a group that has a bunch of objects in it but it also goes around the group's hidden objects and I can't remember if this is normal. I don't think it's supposed to do that. Right?

Can someone confirm this for me? or help me troubleshoot it? I feel like this is wrong because when the whole group is selected while the object in question is invisible it does this:

I do not have a stray object or path I promise... Anyway, when I make the object visible in this case it is a group of distress patterns (for screen printing shown below)

and then, if I select the group in this state and make the destress group invisible while selected, the bounding box goes around the visible objects only as it should (from what I remember this is what it normally should do)

SEE?! Is this a bug? It's been really impairing my workflow...

Help please lol.

-AA

Correct answer Kurt Gold

This is and has been normal behaviour when selecting a group with the Selection tool (black arrow) while at least one object within the group is locked or hidden.

Illustrator then treats the entire container (group) and recognises the locked or hidden objects as well. That's useful in many cases, for example when you are going to move the container without intending to leave the locked or hidden items all alone.

To prevent that behaviour you may select the container by dragging a selection marquee around the group with the Group Selection tool (and then possibly hitting the V key). Or use the Layers panel to select the group without recognising the locked / hidden objects.

Jacob Bugge

Community Expert

Timmy,

Is there a reason to have the Distress Group larger than the desired Bounding Box, rather than delete the outlying parts?

Kurt Gold

Correct answer

Community Expert

This is and has been normal behaviour when selecting a group with the Selection tool (black arrow) while at least one object within the group is locked or hidden.

Illustrator then treats the entire container (group) and recognises the locked or hidden objects as well. That's useful in many cases, for example when you are going to move the container without intending to leave the locked or hidden items all alone.

To prevent that behaviour you may select the container by dragging a selection marquee around the group with the Group Selection tool (and then possibly hitting the V key). Or use the Layers panel to select the group without recognising the locked / hidden objects.

T

Timmy SethiAuthor

Participant

Thank you for confirming!
It was just one of those things that didn't seem quite right for me. I found a solution to the issue, which is just using clipping masks that do not go over the artwork area.

It would be nice to have an option that recognizes the selected group and only displays the bounding box around the visible sections while also taking account of the invisible objects (increasing size and such). I typically need to over shoot the destress so that I can get it to hit the edges of the artwork but I also need to properly size the art underneath that for printing... so if the bonding box is taking into account the invisible destress layer I can't get a proper sizing.

I either have to separate the two and adjust that way, measure the overlapping distress and add it to my resizing, or use a clipping mask - keep it in the group and wait until the end and release the clipping mask.

oh well, thanks anyways.

B

Bobby Henderson

Community Expert

If the invisible stuff over-shooting the visible objects are contained in a clipping mask the bounding box should be no bigger than the clipping mask. Is there some sort of transparency mode or something applied to the destress group? Some transparency modes can make certain objects invisible yet still select-able. Settings may be visible in either the Transparency panel or Appearance panel.

kglad

Community Expert

in the future, to find the best place to post your message, use the list here, https://community.adobe.com/

p.s. i don't think the adobe website, and forums in particular, are easy to navigate, so don't spend a lot of time searching that forum list. do your best and we'll move the post (like this one has already been moved) if it helps you get responses.

<"moved from using the community bugs">

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