Empty groups

In the past, I have been lazy about naming Groups and Components. So if I go back to an old drawing and look at the Outliner, I often see just a bunch of Groups/Components that are generically named. If I am doing some housekeeping, I might select such a Group to see what it is and then give it a more realistic name. However, I often find that there is what looks like an empty box. I make sure I have all tags turned on and Hidden Geometry turned on, but it still looks empty. What else should I be doing to make sure it is in fact safely deletable? Here is an example:

Triple click on the group in the Outliner and then look at Outliner. Does it show there’s anything selected?

I found the answer by selecting the group, copy to clipboard, and pasting to a new blank file. Then the item magically appeared. Just as well I didn’t assume it was empty and deleted it before doing so!

So why didn’t the contents show in the model where you found it?

A group cannot be empty.
SketchUp auto-garbage-collects empty groups and deletes them.
It might contain objects on hidden tags/layers, or hidden geometry/objects, or ‘visibility off’ guides or guide-points, but it cannot be ‘empty’…

So the contents must be there somewhere if you have everything switched on ??

The model’s data-base might have a glitch - have you tried Model Info > Statistics > Fix issues ?

Perzackerly!

Simon - from mobile

Did you try selecting the group, Edit>Cut and immediately Edit>Paste-in-Place

Did that jolt any sense back into the model ?

What’s in the group when you fix it, out of interest ??

No, but I managed to solve it another way, as mentioned above.

The group turned out to be a simple window but I still have no idea why that didn’t show when I first “interrogated” the system. I’m not sure I can reproduce the problem as I have now gone through and named all the Groups.

I didn’t, but that is exactly the kind of advice I was after. So I will try to remember to try that if there is a next time.