Gary, thank you. Can you locate the Thread? I think your point is not accurate. If I did then it is wrong but I need the context.
I know of about half a dozen methods of hiding or forcing hidden objects to be visible, which I use to good effect in my designs.
Others stumble into them without recalling how. Back-tracking is never easy.

Soft-grouped shapes do not present as different until any one is selected then all members are also selected.
You best see this when Locate is active in the Page & Layer gallery.
The soft-group detail also appears in the Status Line.
You have to actively look for them.

What I have done in the past is add another marker into the Soft-Group and keep it off-page in a list of Soft-Groupings.
it is the equivalent of finding the needle in the haystack by burning the haystack and converting the search from 3D to 2D.

Or just force the marker to stay invisible at all times.
One method, at its simplest, is to add <div></div> to Placeholder Body HTML (code)).

Acorn