Grouping keeps strips together on your board. When strips are grouped, selecting one selects them all, so they move together when you drag them. It’s perfect for scenes that always need to be shot back to back, such as a sequence in one location, a stunt with its setup, or scenes that share a special piece of equipment.
Unlike merging, grouping doesn’t change your strips. Each strip keeps its own scene number, pages and elements.
Grouping Strips
To group strips:
- Select two or more strips that are next to each other on the same board. Shift-click to select a range. See Updating Multiple Breakdowns (Multi-Select).
- Click the “Group” button in the board pane’s menu bar, or press Alt + Ctrl/Cmd + Z (Option + Cmd + Z on a Mac)
You can also choose “Group” from the “Breakdowns” menu in the schedule menu bar.
Grouped strips are shown joined together on the board, without the usual gap between them, so you can see at a glance which strips belong together.
Rules for Grouping
The Group button is only available when:
- You’ve selected at least two strips
- All of the selected strips are on the same board
- The selected strips are next to each other, with no other strips between them. If they aren’t, drag them together first.
- None of the selected strips are already in a group
A strip can only belong to one group at a time. Banners and day breaks can be grouped with strips too, for example to keep a banner with the scenes it describes.
Working With Grouped Strips
- Selecting: Click any strip in a group to select the whole group
- Moving: Drag the group to move every strip in it together, to a new position, another board or the recycle bin. See Drag and Drop Scheduling and Recycle Bin.
- Editing: Because the whole group is selected, changes you make in the breakdown pane apply to every strip in the group. To edit a single strip, ungroup the strips first.
Ungrouping Strips
To ungroup strips:
- Click any strip in the group. The whole group is selected.
- Click the Group button in the board pane’s menu bar again (its tooltip changes to “Ungroup” when a group is selected), choose “Group” from the Breakdowns menu, or press Alt + Ctrl/Cmd + Z
The strips stay where they are and become separate strips again.
Groups in Other Scenarios
Strips are shared by all of the scenarios in your schedule, so a group applies to those strips in every scenario. If the strips are arranged differently in another scenario, they’re still grouped there and are still selected together. See Managing Schedule Scenarios.
Grouping or Merging?
- Group when the scenes should stay separate but always be scheduled together. Each strip keeps its own scene number, pages and elements.
- Merge when you want to treat several scenes as one strip, with their scene numbers combined and their pages added up. See Splitting and Merging Strips.
Grouping isn’t available in the Duration view, and you need permission to edit the schedule to group or ungroup strips.
Grouping lets you lock related scenes together, so they never get separated as your schedule changes.
