Perplexing group editing message
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Why do I sometimes get this message when opening a GROUP for editing: “Some instances of the selected component are locked. Would you like to unlock the locked instances, or leave them locked and make the selected component unique?”
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What is your question?
The message is pretty straighforward.
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The message says 'component'. But in reality, I'm editing a group.
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Have you made copies of the Group? Groups and Components have a lot of overlap in their implementation, and in the past there have been some bugs when copies are made of a Group.
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Instances of a Component can be edited, and the changes made to one Instance affect all of the others.
To edit one Instance only you must use 'make unique' on it before editing it.
If there are some locked Instances, then SketchUp assumes you don't really want to change those, so it offers you the chance to run 'make unique' on the non-locked one which you are trying to edit: then the locked ones will not be changed - OR if you unlock them all, then changing the current one in the edit will affect all of the others.
It's a safety-net.A Group is a special kind of Component - it does not appear in the Components Browser, and there are some other subtleties about 'uniqueness'.
So although Groups are normally singular, it's also possible to make multiple copies [Instances] of a Group [see the 'count' in 'Entity Info'], but as soon as you edit one of those Groups, then that one is automatically 'made unique', and therefore any changes you make do not affect the other Instances.
So in some ways SketchUp's 'locked' trapping message is over-zealous when it happens with Groups - if none of its Instances were locked, then editing one does NOT change the others, because the one you are editing is 'made unique', AND editing a Group while it has locked Instances will also have the very same outcome, with the other Instances [locked or otherwise] will be unaffected by the editing of that now unique Group. -
What TIG describes is correct for the current version of SketchUp. Your profile says you are still using v8, is that correct? If so there were bugs in the relationship between Groups and Components that were fixed in subsequent releases of SketchUp.
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using pro version 2015. i just updated the profile.
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