Why cant you paste a group into itself?

Is there a reason why you cannot copy a group and paste it into itself?
When I try I get this message:
Capture

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Why would you want to do that? Can you share an SKP file in which that would be appropriate?

You’re trying to create an infinite loop, you’ll rip a hole in the space time continuum.

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Because… if you could do that, then it would disappear up its own fundament !
In a hopeless loop…
But luckily you are not in charge of the Large Hadron Collider !
[Joke]
However, you could Edit>Copy the contents of a group - i.e. while you are editing it.
Then, whilst still in that context [or another entities-context] use Edit>Paste OR Edit>Paste_In_Place - although the latter will overwrite existing stuff if the entities-context remains unchanged !

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This isn’t really something that is all that important but I was just curious to see if anyone knows why you cant insert a group into itself.

Here is the only instance that it ever occurs for me (and yes I know that I can just group the two and explode the nested groups).

I mirrored a building’s massing and roofs and want to group them accordingly but I cannot cut and paste in place the geometry within the original group. Example.skp (150.3 KB)

If you simply make a copy of the group, enter the copy and leave it again it should have been given a unique definition. They you should be able to copy one of the groups into the other.

For components it makes perfect sense that you cant create recursive references by placing one component inside of itself but for groups I would say it’s a bug that the parent isn’t given it’s unique definition automatically. From a user point of view groups are supposed to behave as if they always have unique definitions, even if they actually share definitions up to that point one is being edited.

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Well Adobe has it, I think. It is called the ‘Droste effect’ So there might be an 3D alternative ?

there might be some clipping issues …:slight_smile:

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This is a common error when saving files to be used as components, and may lead to crashes and other malfunctions. You start a new file, create a component, and then save the file with the same name. Pandemonium results when you insert that into another file. The right procedure is to right-click on the component, and select “Save As” from the context menu.

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