Have just subscribed to Sketchup Shop and am trying to rename a group. Context clicking does not work. Is there a shortcut key, extension or other suggestion?
Make a component instead. You can give it a name immediately and edit the name later if you wish.
Is this your way of saying that Groups cannot be renamed with this version of Sketchup?
I have never used shop, but it has Outliner, you should be able to change it there.
Currently groups don’t show a name in Entity Info so I suppose you could take it that way. Perhaps that will change at some point.
Expanding on @DaveR’s reply:
I don’t think there is any right-click (context) menu item to rename a group or component, even on the desktop version, except as @Box noted in the outliner window.
But you need to also be aware of the difference between groups and components to understand what can and cannot be renamed and why. Groups are implemented as a special case of components. They share the same internal structure, with a definition that actually owns the contents and a transformation that maps that contents to an instance at a location and scale in the model. Think of the definition as a “stencil” and an instance as a print made using that stencil.
Both components and groups can have multiple copies (instances) in a model. But if you edit a copied group instance, it is immediately broken off as a new unique group with its own definition and a single instance. Done carelessly, this will lead to bloat of your model because each added definition has its own data, even if it duplicates another.
The definition and the instance each have a name. But for groups the definition name is auto-generated by the back end (e.g. "Group#2) and cannot be user-chosen or renamed. This name is in general not even visible to the user, and since it applies only to copies that have not been edited in any way, is not really of much value to a user. In contrast, component definition names are accessible and can be changed by the user.
Instance names can be user-assigned and changed for both components and groups. The act of creating a group does not offer an opportunity to set an instance name even though an instance is made. But on groups, changing the instance name is considered to be an edit action and if there are other copies of the group the edit causes the renamed one to break off as a new unique group. For components, it affects just that one instance and the instance continues to share geometry with other instances via a single definition.
In the desktop version, entity info shows just the instance name for a group because the underlying definition name isn’t visible anyway, and both the definition and instance names for a component. I don’t use SketchUp Shop so I am not sure…doesn’t entity info do the same there?
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Let’s try to keep this simple, please. Just trying to understand IF a group can be renamed.
In both the outliner and the entity info, right clicking the autoname will not present a context menu for making a change.
In several instances, I have read the name can be changed but I can’t find the method.
It can be changed in the desktop versions of SketchUp. As you are finding out, that doesn’t appear to be implemented in the web-based versions.
Thank you. I won’t be wasting any more time on that. Hate it when things don’t work the same between desktop and web programs.
Oddly, the web version does present both definition and instance names in the entity info window when the selection is a component. Seems like a strange difference…
It does seem like a strange difference, indeed.
The web versions are constantly evolving and getting updates. It’s entirely possible this will be changed.