04.7 · Editing Annotations

Grouping and Alignment

Groups

A group is a set of annotations that move, delete and (partially) transform as one.

Create a Group

Multi-select 2+ annotations (Ctrl+Click or Shift+Click).
Right-click → Group or press Ctrl+G.

The group is assigned a new Group ID. Selecting any member now selects the whole group.

Ungroup

Select one member of the group.
Right-click → Ungroup or press Ctrl+Shift+G.

The group ID is cleared on all members; they become individual annotations again.

What Grouping Does

Selection — clicking any member selects all.
Move / delete — applies to the whole group.
Z-order — group members keep their relative order; the whole group moves to front / back together.

What Grouping Doesn't Do

It does NOT lock the group shape. Individual resize of one member is still allowed after selecting that one specifically (hold Alt+Click in some builds).
Rotation applied to the group rotates each member around the group centre; rotating one member after ungrouping won't rotate the others.

Alignment

When 2+ annotations are selected, the right-click Align submenu offers:

Align Options

Option	Effect
Align Left	All move so their left edges match the leftmost
Align Right	Right edges match the rightmost
Align Top	Top edges match the topmost
Align Bottom	Bottom edges match the bottom-most
Center Horizontally	Horizontal centers match the group's horizontal center
Center Vertically	Vertical centers match the group's vertical center

Distribution

Option	Effect
Distribute Horizontally	Equalise horizontal gap between consecutive annotations
Distribute Vertically	Equalise vertical gap

Distribution requires at least 3 annotations.

Reference Annotation

Most tools use the extremity annotation as the reference — e.g. Align Left uses whichever annotation is furthest left as the target.

Pixel Snapping

All alignment is in page-coordinate units, not pixels. Operations are deterministic and don't depend on zoom.

Undo

Each alignment operation is one undo entry — a single Ctrl+Z reverts the whole align.

Common Workflows

Making a Tidy Column

Draw several annotations roughly stacked.
Select all (rubber-band or Ctrl+Click).
Right-click → Align → Align Left.
Right-click → Align → Distribute Vertically.

Result: all annotations left-aligned and evenly spaced.

Boxing a Region

Draw a Rectangle.
Draw a Text Box inside it with your label.
Select both → Group → now they move together as one comment block.

Stacked Stamps

Place Approved + Date stamps.
Multi-select.
Right-click → Align → Center Horizontally.

Stamps line up on a shared centre-line.

Tips

Tip

Tip — Alignment respects current rotation: if an annotation is rotated, its bounding box is the axis-aligned bounds, which can give surprising results when aligning rotated shapes. Un-rotate first for predictable alignment.

Tip

Warning — Grouping does NOT persist across copy/paste in all scenarios. Copying a group to another document clones the members but may not preserve the Group ID. Re-group in the target document if needed.