Hi @scottd,
Thanks your for your feedback. Here are a few examples:
Hatches and boundary
When working with hatches, particularly solid hatches, you need to duplicate the border if you want the colour and thickness of the border to be different from that of the hatch itself. This creates a large number of duplicate forms. One solution is to group the hatches with the borders in order to manage them better. Losing this when creating a block is a nightmare. Especially if you have hundreds of hatches. (see topic: Hatch object including outline and solid background - #2 by Helvetosaur)
Alternative: Ability to manage hatch colour/weight and hatch boundary colour/weight separately and by layer/material specification.
Linetypes
The same applies to linetypes. Groups are needed as a workaround to allow watertight, symbol or multiple colour lines to be drawn. (see topic: Dual color linetype - #14 by Helvetosaur & Symbol (Block) Linetypes)
Alternative: Possibility of managing all types of lines internally.
CSV Survey points Import
When importing survey points, it is necessary to attach the name of the points or other information to the coordinates. To do this, you need to create groups. Losing these groups because it is suddenly necessary to make a block is very complicated. (CSV Survey points Import - Naming/labelling points)
I’m sure there are other examples, groups are useful for speeding up workflow and selection.
As long as blocks are not only used for repetitive objects, but also to organise part of a file, it would be nice if they could handle most of Rhino’s functions. It’s tedious to have to abandon groups because you have blocks, or abandon blocks because you have groups.