Marque select one object within a soft group selects the whole soft group

[Know1]

When you marquee select you are trying to get everything inside the marquee selection and ignore what's outside it, with Soft Groups it adds more.

I'm working on a website where there is a shadow underneath images and I've soft grouped the image and shadow together so the image itself exports as a JPG and the shadow as a PNG. When I try to marquee objects close to the Soft Group, I keep selecting the tiny shadow object and therefore the entire Soft Group. I keep expecting the Soft Group to be ignored in my selection.

I guess it's a minor annoyance, and it doesn't actually break anything on the page like some of the other stuff I've encountered.

My thoughts on it:

For a single click on a Soft Group, sure, select the Soft Group.
Shift click on the Soft Group? Go ahead and add it to the selection you already have.
With a marquee selection that isn't around the entire Soft Group I think it shouldn't get selected.

You guys think the entire Soft Group should get selected for a partial marquee selection just because one object happens to be inside the marquee?

[gwpriester]

Marquee select selects all objects. If one of those objects selected is a soft group, the entire soft group is included in the selection.

Fred C's solution is the way to select individual objects in a group or soft group.

If you need to edit the objects in a soft group, the simplest way to do this is remove the soft group. Make your changes and adjustments, then Apply Soft Group again.

[handrawn]

yes - because this is one of the reasons for using a soft group as opposed to a normal group - though I am not looking at it from a website point of view...

I understand what you are saying - ie you do NOT want ANY of the soft group selected - maybe lock it first?

[Acorn]

Soft Groups were designed to always select all members, on different layers, in Solo mode, locked or not. [Locking a Soft-Group all elements requires individual element selection].

Selecting one member of a Soft Group also selects all other members of the same Soft Group – even members that are on invisible or locked layers. This means when you delete, move, rotate or otherwise transform one member of a Soft Group, all the other members are similarly modified.

I get round it by using the Page & Layer gallery and the Ctrl key. Not a great solution.

You can, however, also temporarily group a number of elements of a Soft-Group with Ctrl+Clicking as above and then Group (Ctrl+G). This decouples the elements so they are still in the Soft-Group and the selection of any other non-group element selects the whole Soft-Group but crucially a selection of the grouped elements only selects the sub-Group. This allows moving the Soft-Group, the sub-Group or any selected element independently. Just select the sub-Group and Ungroup (Ctrl+U) to restore the Soft-Group.

I think this help with partial marquee selections involving a Soft-Group.

Acorn

[Know1]

Thanks for the replies. I don't think I'm clear enough about what I meant.

I'm not trying to select a Soft Group and I'm not trying to select inside a Soft Group to edit anything.

The Lorem Ipsum text in my original example (which is not part of the Soft Group) is what I want to select with a marquee selection.
So my example points out that when the marquee selection just so happens to include an object that's inside a Soft Group, the Soft Group also gets selected.

So my issue is that the Soft Group gets selected at all.

[handrawn]

sure I think that past by some.. but my point is that is the way soft groups are designed to work - if they were the same as ordinary groups there would be little point in having them - they are 'linked' objects, select one you select them all

edit: for example say you have a mass of objects and you only want to select three, but because of the positioning marque selection would select dozens - if the three are soft grouped you only need find and click the one, and they do not need to be on the same layer stacked together as in a normal group would have to be

[Know1]

if the three are soft grouped you only need find and click the one

Yes, with a click on one of the three objects that are part of a Soft Group all three should get selected, I agree with you there. That's a deliberate act to select the Soft Group.
Same goes for a shift click on one of the three objects to add the Soft Group to a selection.

A marquee selection is different. Its purpose is to only select what's inside the marquee completely.
A Soft Group should still be treated as a Group, as one object selection wise. If it's not entirely inside the marquee, ignore it and don't add it to the selection.

[handrawn]

not sure I agree, click was just an example - if you want to select the soft group and other objects as well then marquee applies - basically you cannot have it both ways, I would not want to lose that function

[Know1]

Let's say all the blurry dots are part of a Soft Group. And I want to marquee select just the three squares.
Well, now I can't do that. There will always be a small blurry dot in the marquee selection, and therefore the entire Soft Group of blurry dots will also be selected.