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I have several objects in a collection. Some only carve others and should always be invisible. I want to select all objects in a collection, so that I can move it without changing its internal structure. Yet Collection -> Select objects selects only the visible ones. It makes no sense to me - the carvings should move together with the carved.

So I need to make temporarily visible all invisible objects one by one, then select objects, then move the collection, then deselect the objects which should be invisible. Time consuming and error prone.

Blender has multiple methods of choosing object visibility, eye, screen, camera. I tried different combinations, and it seems that both eye and camera exclude an object from "select in collection". Any method of having an object which is invisible on the screen and in the rendering, but can be selected as a member of a collection? Doesn't "select all in a collection" sound like a basic operation"?

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I think this is a question where it's worth stepping back and asking what the real problem is. Here, you want two things: you want objects to not be visible (probably, to prevent them from obscuring your view) and you also want to be able to move objects.

I make a lot of non-rendering objects. Rather than hiding these objects, I set their display to wireframe, in properties/object/viewport display:

enter image description here

These objects are still selectable, but they're difficult to select in the 3D viewport-- you have to click close to the actual edges. They're still easily enough selected via operations like select all or select similar. They won't show up in a viewport that has overlays disabled (and I usually work with two 3D viewports open, one with overlays disabled.) That's good enough for a viewport render. They'll still render in a "real" render, which is probably a problem, but it's an easily fixed problem. We can disable their visibility in renders in a number of ways. One way is to disable show in "renders" in properties/object/visibility/show in:

enter image description here

Once we do those two things, we have a convenient, non-rendering object that won't get in the way, that's easily hidden when necessary via clicking on overlays, and that we can still easily select and edit.

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You can select the first object in the collection and then go down to the last object and Shift select, this will select all objects that are between the two selected ones(even if their visibillity is set to off).

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  • $\begingroup$ It does selects objects, but at least in one case, when I try to move them, only the visible ones move together. If I make an already selected object visible and try to move the selected objects again, then the object just made visible moves as well. So there is kind-of two-level selection in Blender? $\endgroup$
    – scriptfoo
    Commented Apr 2, 2020 at 8:04
  • $\begingroup$ Is is particularly visible when I delete objects in a selection made that way: all objects disappear. Now I undo, move objects in the same selection and only the visible ones actually move. $\endgroup$
    – scriptfoo
    Commented Apr 2, 2020 at 8:06
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The BlenderBim add on https://blenderbim.org/ adds the functionality to right click on a collection and select all. picture of the right click menu with Select Objects option

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