Draft Autogroup not working anymore

[carlopav]

Testing support for App::Part in Draft, i noticed that Draft Autogroup doesn't work anymore on Std::Group object.
It works instead on layer objects, that AFAICS are less or more the old VisGroup.
Am I mistaking something?

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OS: Windows 7 SP 1 (6.1)
Word size of OS: 64-bit
Word size of FreeCAD: 64-bit
Version: 0.19.19093 (Git)
Build type: Release
Branch: master
Hash: 9e4710d679d44613a1ae4264b86ef9f6d12f4e5a
Python version: 3.6.8
Qt version: 5.12.1
Coin version: 4.0.0a
OCC version: 7.3.0
Locale: Italian/Italy (it_IT)

[vocx]

Testing support for App::Part in Draft, i noticed that Draft Autogroup doesn't work anymore on Std::Group object.
It works instead on layer objects, that AFAICS are less or more the old VisGroup.
Am I mistaking something?

I remember when Yorik introduced the new Draft Layer system, he mentioned something about Draft Autogroup not being particularly useful, and seemingly not many people used it. So maybe it kinda broke and nobody bothered to fix it.

Draft Layers

We could modify the Draft autogroup system... I believe nobody ever used that feature, not even me

[bernd]

It is not a bug it is a feature. AFAIK Autogrup was deactivated by default when layer where introduced.

[carlopav]

Not exactly:
Part of the tool now serves layers, and part auto-add new object to active Arch container (I guess building part).
In the "App:Part Draft support" PR, I commited a change to auto-add objects also to active App:Part if present.
I may observe that I miss the auto-add to group. It won't be bad if we could bring it back.

[yorik]

The old behaviour (include groups and buildingparts in the autogroup drop-down list) is still available, there is an option for it in the Draft preferences

[matthijskooijman]

Hm, if this behavior changed, the documentation should be reflected to update this.

I'm a bit surprised that using autogroup for groups rather than just layers is not actually commonly used, but I haven't worked with FreeCAD and BIM much, so maybe this will start making sense to me later

The old behaviour (include groups and buildingparts in the autogroup drop-down list) is still available, there is an option for it in the Draft preferences

Do you mean the "Show groups in layers list drop-down button" checkbox? If so, then this does not seem to work for me (also, the checkbox label might need to be rephrased to be more clear, maybe?). If not, then which settings controls this?

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OS: Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS (GNOME/gnome-xorg)
Word size of FreeCAD: 64-bit
Version: 0.20.24599 +1 (Git)
Build type: Debug
Branch: tablet-motion-compression
Hash: ae4f27c6e17952f19b4e687e3de99c33b6f6dc0e
Python version: 3.8.5
Qt version: 5.12.8
Coin version: 4.0.0
OCC version: 7.5.1
Locale: English/United States (en_US)

[Roy_043]

Do you mean the "Show groups in layers list drop-down button" checkbox? If so, then this does not seem to work for me

Confirmed. The setting does not work.

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OS: Windows 8.1 (6.3)
Word size of OS: 64-bit
Word size of FreeCAD: 64-bit
Version: 0.19.24219 (Git)
Build type: Release
Branch: master
Hash: 8c26baebab320b8c1c3279bc8eb34a1eb6c7a363
Python version: 3.6.8
Qt version: 5.12.1
Coin version: 4.0.0a
OCC version: 7.3.0
Locale: Dutch/Netherlands (nl_NL)

[matthijskooijman]

Also, IIUC the "Draft autogroup" feature was essentially repurposed to be a "Draft autolayer" feature, because for some, maybe most, workflows, using layers made more sense than using groups. However, I've also seen people say that using groups is also a good way to add structure to a design, so it would seem to make sense to use both layers and groups in the same design.

If so, wouldn't it make sense to have *both* an autogroup *and* an autolayer feature? So you can select both, and a new object is automatically added to a current group *and* a current layer?

[matthijskooijman]

I've submitted a PR to fix the preference, which makes autogroup work with layers *and* groups again (if enabled in Draft preferences): https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/pull/4810

[dimitar]

I've submitted a PR to fix the preference, which makes autogroup work with layers *and* groups again (if enabled in Draft preferences): https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/pull/4810

Thank you! Definitely thing that this feature is a huge timesaver!