Inspiring

Question

Group without grouping!

Forum|Forum|10 months ago
May 6, 2025
3 replies
1917 views

Hi,

I have an object with items in multiple layers. For the sake of aligning it with other objects, I would need to group it or turn it into a symbol. However, both of these options move all items in the object into a single layer. Is there a simple way of having the object behave as a group (for the sake of aligning it) without grouping it? In other words, I would like to keep all the items in the layers where they are, but be able to align the object as a whole.

This is for CS4.

Thanks.

How-to

B

Bobby Henderson

Community Expert

Here's another idea: select the object you want to use as an alignment target and take note of its numerical position on the art board. That can be seen in the Transform panel. You can change the Reference Point on the 9 point icon to get a horizontal or vertical position. Select the objects that are on different layers and then enter that same horizontal or vertical axis position in the Transform panel. The selected objects will move to that new position. They will be aligned with the target object, yet remain on separate layers.

Kurt Gold

Community Expert

Sergey Anosov has a very nice script that may be a thrilling starting point for you to modify it according to your specific needs.

Take a look here:

https://sites.google.com/site/dtpscripting/illustrator-scripts/positiononartboard?authuser=0

Then take a look at the "Move like a group" option.

Jacob Bugge

Community Expert

s,

The solution is Save Selection in the Select dropdown:

1) Select all the objects across Layers;

2) In the Select dropdown click Save Selection and give it a name;

Whenever you need to select the Saved Selection, you can just:

3) Click the given name in the Select dropdown and enjoy.

It works in CS4.

S

sPretzelAuthor

Inspiring

Hi Jacob,

Thanks for your suggestion. I had not thought of it. I tried it but it merely saves the selection, as it says. Then I recall it and everything is selected just as I saved it. But if I align the selection to another object, then every item aligns individually to that object. So it doesn't turn the selection into a single unit. In that sense, Save Selection doesn't behave like Group.

Jacob Bugge

Community Expert

Hello Everybody,

First of all, Jacob, I really appreciate the effort you put into coming up with a solution. I am starting to wonder if that is the work of a volunteer or an Adobe-funded employee or contractor !! 😉 Either way, thank you very much.

For now, I have resorted to converting my object to a symbol. It is not exactly how I want it but the original object is still there (with all its layers) and if I need to, I can replace the symbol with a new one.

Now looking at your solutions. One underlying goal in my original post, which I didn't make clear, was for the result to be a couple of clicks away when aligning, just like aligning with the Align panel. I find both solutions, in particular B, to be "click-intensive". But I have an issue with something else, and that also is in Bobby's solution. In my experience, copying the numerical values displayed in the Transform Panel can lose precision (copying only copies the value displayed). I see that when I change to a finer unit like point. It is a small issue but it's real. However, aligning using the Align panel keeps those values intact.

Kurt, thanks for the suggestion. I will take a look. I don't write scripts on a regular basis so it takes me some time to get back up to speed when I do. I don't intend to write one for this task as it is fairly small (though I have quite a few such objects to align).

Bobby. If I understood your solution correctly, it is fairly similar to solution A of Jacob. If I do a number of aligning and realigning, there will be too many steps. It also has the rounding issue for the coordinates.

Thanks all three of you for helping.

For my part you are welcome, s, and thank you very much for your kind words.

You are right about the rounding, of course. This is one of the reasons I always let Illy do the calculations whenever possible and get the accurate numbers (within the inherent far finer roundings), or use aligning and snapping and other drawing solutions.

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