Changing groups from screen to layer plane

[whashisface]

Hi

I have inherited a project from a colleague which has been drawn in 2D. I need to turn it into a 3D drawing and want to change all the 2D information to display on the layer plane.

If I select a 2D object the object info palette gives me the option to change it from screen to layer plane. However this doesn't work for groups of objects.

Is there a way to quickly change grouped objects to display on the layer plane without having to ungroup them, select the individual objects and then change them to the layer plane?

Thanks in advance!

[SonnyLuong]

You can double click the group to go inside the group editing space, copy whatever entities you want to bring out of that environment, exit the group editing space, paste them on the layer plane and do whatever you want with those entities.

[Alexander Studio]

I have found that when I want to change a large number of various items from screen to layer, or vice versa, it is easiest to make a simple VectorScript with the Custom Selection submenu command. (via the Tools menu).

When setting up the criteria for your script, choose "Plane" is "Layer Plane" for one script and "Plane" is "Screen Plane" for another script. Double clicking the ScreenPlane script command will select all of the items that are in the Screen Plane amongst the various objects currently visible.

Once they are selected, even though they might be lines, circles, squares, text, etc? the Object Info Palette will allow you to change their plane orientation from Screen to Layer via a drop down menu "Plane" in the palette. Since they all share this attribute and you custom selected by layer, the Object Info Palette shows a Plane menu item that can toggle from Layer to Screen.

So if you have grouped objects that might contain Screen Plane objects you can either show all classes, explode your groups and change all of the Screen Plane objects to Layer Plane all at once? or, if it's not desirable to ungroup certain groups, you will have to enter each group and execute the script command to select the Screen Plane objects then change them to Layer Plane via the Object Info Palette.

This works for me. Hope that helps. I don't think you can directly change groups from screen plane to layer plane. That would be a cool wish list item though...

[Christiaan]

See this thread to download a script that changes all objects to either layer or screen plane, including objects in groups:

https://techboard.vectorworks.net/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=196238#Post196238

[Alexander Studio]

Thanks for the link Christiaan. I'm going to try it out. I think that it will be quite useful...