Google Drawings is one of the simplest tools you can use to create amazing infographics, flyers, or flowcharts for your Google Docs or Slides. And the best part about using it on other similar platforms is that it keeps all your projects backed up on Google Drive. Inserting your Google Drawings into Google Docs is also a fairly straightforward process, but there is a problem you may encounter when moving your drawings.
You see, if you don’t group all the items that you’ve used in your drawing, you can accidentally move an element. And if you do, you’ll spend the next few minutes making sure everything aligns correctly. Another problem you might run into if you don’t group all the items together is that you’ll have trouble scaling or replicating your project once it’s done.
That’s why I strongly recommend grouping all the items after completing your project. If you are not sure how to do it, then you have come to the right place. Read to find out.
How to group items in Google Drawings
Grouping items in Google Drawings is a fairly straightforward process. For this article, I will use this simple flowchart as an example.
Now, to group all the shapes and lines in this diagram, you need to follow these simple steps:
Step 1: Move the cursor to an empty part of the canvas, do a left click and drag to make a selection around your artboard.
Step 2: Then click the Arrange option in the top toolbar to open the drop-down menu.
Step 3: Click on the Group option in the menu to club all the selected items.
And with just that, all the items in your drawing will be grouped. Now, when you click on any item, the entire artboard will be selected and you’ll be able to easily resize, flip, rotate, and even align it from within the Arrange menu.
To resize your artboard, simply move the pointer to any corner until the drawing changes shape. Then left click and drag inward or outward to make the drawing smaller or larger. Simple isn’t it?
Now, there’s one thing you should know if you’re grouping items in your Google Drawings. Once grouped, the platform doesn’t allow you to make major changes to your drawings. So if you want to add more items to your flowchart, you need to ungroup those items first. Just follow these simple steps to ungroup items in Google Drawings:
Step 1: Click on the grouped item to select.
Step 2: Then click the Arrange option in the top toolbar to open the drop-down menu.
Step 3: Click Ungroup in the menu and you’re done.
Now you will be able to add or remove items in your drawing easily. However, if you just want to make some small changes to a specific item in a group. You can double-click the item to select it and then make the necessary changes. But this method won’t let you add or remove items from a group.
Once you understand the process, you can also use keyboard shortcuts to quickly group and ungroup objects in Google Drawings. To group items, you can use keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Alt+G after selecting items like I mentioned earlier. And to ungroup items, you can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Alt+Shift+G.
Alternatively, you can use the right-click context menu to group or ungroup items. Simply select the items you want to group, right-click anywhere in the selection, and then click Group in the context menu. To ungroup, simply click on the grouped item to select it, right-click anywhere in the selection, and then click Ungroup in the context menu. Isn’t that convenient?
And the best part about Google Drawings is that you don’t have to group all the items in your drawing. That means you can have multiple teams on a project, and that makes it easy to make small adjustments quickly. The process for creating several different groups remains exactly the same.
Use grouped items to your advantage
Now that you know how to group objects in Google Drawings, you can use this feature to create more complex projects without worrying about accidentally moving or resizing an item. This feature also allows you to easily rotate, flip, move, or resize all shapes or items at once as if they were a single item. Just make sure you ungroup the items before making any major changes to the project. Then you can always add a grouping of items to Google Docs to make your file stand out.
Next up: Want to make an item in your drawing transparent? See the next article to learn how you can change the transparency in Google Drawings.
Categories: How to
Source: thpttranhungdao.edu.vn/en/
