How do I "group" without visual artifacts?

Question

I want to be able to group icons together, so they move and resize together. But not to add a bounding box, or shading, or a grab handle, or text, or a shadow. Usually, I want no visual artifacts whatsoever.

I can't figure out how to simply group one or more objects with no visual clutter. Help!

Answer 1

So, you actually do not want to group nodes but create a custom visualization for one node. The recommended way to do that for yEd is by creating an image or vector graphic and import that visualization into a user-defined palette section for use as node template (see How can I use my own node symbols in yEd? for further information). It is even possible to import Microsoft Visio stencils.

Nevertheless, yEd does offer some ways to create complex visualization for nodes:

• Add labels with icons to your nodes. It is also possible to use existing nodes as label icons for other nodes (see Where did you get the Component Type Node? for an example).
• Group several nodes, close the resulting group node, enable "Display Inner Graph", and change all the closed group's colors to "No Color".
• Create a diagram that you want to use a visualization for a node. Export your diagram to SVG. Import the resulting SVG document as a node template into a user-defined palette section.