Imposing Slavish Conformity with Groups

Grouping objects is a great way to organize your artwork; it gives several objects a common address, so to speak, where Illustrator can find them. After you click any one of them with the Selection tool, you automatically select all the objects in the group.

To create a group of objects, select the objects that you want to include and then choose Object→Group. You won’t see any physical change in the artwork, but from that point onward, all objects in the group are selected at once (provided that you use the regular Selection tool to select them).

Technical Stuff?

The main difference between layers and groups is that grouping organizes objects by their relationships to other objects rather than by their position inside a layer. As any former high-school student can tell you, belonging to a group means having to conform to its rules. Consider these rules, for example:

Grouped objects must exist in the same layer: You accomplish this by selecting two objects in different layers and grouping them. The bottommost object gets moved into the layer that the topmost object inhabits.
Groups can be grouped together: You accomplish this by selecting two or more groups and choosing Object→Group. If you have two groups called Football Team and Cheerleaders, for example, you can group them in another group called Stadium.
Grouped objects can be ungrouped: You accomplish this by selecting the group and choosing Object→Ungroup. (Or maybe you can get an object in the group to do something uncool. . . .)