Group Dialog

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# 2.9.4 Group Dialog

The Group command combines the selected (Section 2.2.16) Lines and Shapes (Section 2.3) to create structures (Section 2.7). You can give the structure (Section 2.7) a title consisting of Manufacturer, Description and Part Number on the Group dialog.

The title will be pre-populated with the title of the last Structure you ungrouped (Section 2.9).

You can include Turnouts, Sectional, Straight or Curved tracks in the selected objects which allows you to add cosmetic details to a Turnout definitions, or create a new Turnout definition. This can also be used to if there are fixed-track locations on a structure, like on an engine shed.

Group is intended to operate on simple groups of track segments. If you intend to group a large number of track segments, you should consider using Import Module (see Section 2.9.5),

To modify a Structure or Turnout definition, first place the object on the layout, select and then Ungroup the object. Now the parts of the object can be edited using the Modify (Section 2.2.8), Draw (Section 2.3) or other commands. Once completed, select the object parts and use the Group command to update the definition (or create a new one by changing the title).

The Group dialog shows the Manufacturer, Description and part number (Title) of the new definition. Initial values are based on selected turnouts and structures or on the last Ungrouped object (Section 2.9.11). The Turntable/TransferTable/DblSlipSwitch? toggle button controls whether non-conflicting Paths should be combined or keep separate, see Paths below. The Replace with new group? toggle button is used if you want to replace the selected objects with the new definition. All fields listed in this dialog window must contain data.

The definition data will be added to the `xtrkcad.cus` (Section 1.9) file for later use. Please consider contributing this information for others to use.

If you modify a definition from a XTrackCAD Library parameter file, the new definition will replace the existing definition on the Hot Bar (Section 2.7), otherwise it will be added to the end of the Hot Bar. You can use the Custom Management (Section 2.9.2) dialog to change the title or delete custom definitions.

Note: The selected tracks are decomposed into segments, which are simple tracks and drawing object (lines, curves, polygons ... ). Any track segments must appear in the first 127 segments. This implies a limit of 127 track segments.

  You can re-order the segment list by
  - Ungroup the selected tracks
  - Unselect all, and select the tracks you want to group
  - Move selected objects to bottom
  - Add the non-tracks object to the selected track segments
  - Retry the Group command

Paths define which segments are followed by a train in Train mode. Normally, if two paths follow paths of separate segments, then the paths are combined. For example a simple turnout would have two paths, but since the paths share some common segments, the paths are not combined. A Crossing has two paths but since they don't have any segments in common, the two paths are combined into one. A Turntable can have many distinct paths but only one would be valid at any time. In this case we don't want to combine paths and the toggle would be checked.