Aggregate Collapse Expand
- 1 Working With Aggregate Units: Collapse and Expand
- 1.1 Echelon Levels and Hierarchies
- 1.2 Accessing Unit Collapse/Expand Controls
- 1.3 Initial Collapse/Expand State
- 1.4 Collapse All and Expand All
- 1.5 Collapsing and Expanding Individual Levels
- 1.6 Ghosting
- 1.7 Automatic Collapse/Expand
- 1.8 3D Aggregate Display Options
- 1.9 Keyboard Shortcuts (VRF)
- 1.10 Tooltips for Collapse/Expand Actions
Working With Aggregate Units: Collapse and Expand
Aggregate units in VRV and VRF represent hierarchical military organizations (batteries, platoons, sections, vehicles, etc.). This article explains how to control the visibility of those hierarchies in the 2D/3D views and the object list using collapse/expand, automatic behavior, ghosting, and 3D display options.
Echelon Levels and Hierarchies
Aggregate units are composed of multiple echelon levels. For example (See Figure 1), an artillery battery might have:
Level 4: Battery
Level 3: Platoons
Level 2: Sections
Level 1: Individual gun systems (entities)
A higher echelon (higher level number) is a more aggregated unit.
Each level can be made visible or invisible. Invisible levels:
Are not drawn in the 2D/3D scene.
May appear greyed out in the object list (depending on product).
A level can have:
Superiors (up the hierarchy).
Subordinates (down the hierarchy), which can be either entities or other units.
Changing the structure (e.g., adding a subordinate to a lowest-level entity) can increase the number of levels in the unit (e.g., a 4-level unit becoming a 5-level one).
Accessing Unit Collapse/Expand Controls
Unit visibility can be controlled from:
Object list panel (Figure 2.)
Right-click on a unit to open the context menu.
Use the unit submenu.
2D/3D scene (Figure 3.)
Right-click on the MIL-STD-2525 unit icon.
Or use keyboard shortcuts in VRF:
X to expand
O to collapse
Note: The scene and object list may offer slightly different interactions, because in the scene only visible units/entities can be interacted with.
Initial Collapse/Expand State
When a multi-level unit is first created:
It is effectively in an "Expand All" state:
The lowest-level subordinates (leaf entities) are visible.
Superior levels are hidden from the scene.
See Figure 4 for an example
Behavior:
Immediately after creation, the unit is fully expanded to its lowest level.
For any level selected:
Expand and Expand All should normally be unavailable (the unit is already fully expanded).
Collapse and Collapse All should be available, allowing the hierarchy to be collapsed to a higher level.
Collapse All and Expand All
These actions operate on the entire hierarchy of the selected unit, regardless of which level is selected to trigger them.
Collapse All
Collapses the unit to its highest-level superior.
All subordinate levels are hidden (or ghosted, if ghosting is enabled).
Expand All
Expands the unit so that all lowest-level subordinates (leaf entities) are visible.
All superiors are hidden from the map.
Behavior:
Collapse All and Expand All always operate on the full tree below/above the selected unit.
After using Collapse All or Expand All, the corresponding action will be disabled in the menu as repeating it would have no visual effect.
Collapsing and Expanding Individual Levels
Think of collapsing/expanding individual levels as moving the visible focus up or down the hierarchy.
Collapse (individual level)
Concept: "Collapse to the next superior."
Examples:
Collapsing at level 1 collapses the unit to level 2.
Collapsing at level 2 collapses the unit to level 3.
And so on, up to the top of the hierarchy.
From the scene:
Collapsing typically acts on the selected visible unit or entity.
If a lower-level entity is collapsed and its superior is not currently visible, repeated collapse moves visibility up to higher levels (eventually to the top-level unit).
Expand (individual level)
Concept: "Expand to show immediate subordinates."
Examples:
Expanding at level 2 makes all direct subordinates of that level visible.
Expanding at level 3 makes its direct subordinates visible, etc.
Note: The object list allows expand/collapse to be triggered on levels that may not all be individually selectable in the 2D/3D scene, so behavior can appear slightly different between the two.
Highest Echelon Level Behavior
When collapse/expand is selected on the highest-level unit:
Collapse at the highest level:
Equivalent to Collapse All (the unit stays at the highest level; everything below is hidden or ghosted).
Expand at the highest level:
Expands down one level at a time (showing direct subordinates).
Expand All at the highest level:
Expands down to the lowest-level entities.
Lowest-Level (Leaf) Entities
For lowest-level entities (those with no subordinates):
Expand is not available (there is nothing below them).
Collapses visibility up to their superior unit (the next echelon up).
This behavior is the same for any level that has no subordinates.
Ghosting
Ghosting partially shows collapsed subordinates so the structure can be seen without fully expanding the unit.
When ghosting is enabled, subordinate entities that have been collapsed can appear in a ghosted style in the 2D/3D scene.
A "To Echelon Level" controls which levels are ghosted:
Values range from 1 to 10, plus All.
These map to how many levels below the current collapsed unit can appear as ghosted.
Higher-level superiors are not ghosted if they are expanded and already fully visible.
Automatic Collapse/Expand
Automatic collapse/expand adjusts the visible level of detail based on map scale (zoom level) when enabled.
Concepts:
Not a general decluttering system; it controls only aggregate hierarchy visibility.
Thresholds are configured using table entries:
Collapse 1 level when the map scale is above 1:1000
Collapse 2 levels when the map scale is above 1:2000
Collapse 3 levels when the map scale is above 1:3000
As the observer “zooms out” (higher scale values), more levels are automatically collapsed upward.
For deeply nested units, only the configured number of levels collapse automatically; deeper levels may remain expanded or never auto-collapsed.
Hierarchy rules:
Auto-collapse uses the depth of the aggregation tree, not unit type.
Units with no parent superior (topmost in the scenario) are never auto-collapsed by this mechanism (except for internal force-level aggregates, which are not visible/published).
If there are more levels than configured collapse thresholds, the deepest levels may remain unaffected by auto-collapse.
Manual overrides:
Automatic collapse/expand must be turned on to have any effect.
If auto is on and a unit is manually collapsed or expanded:
That unit is marked as user-controlled.
Automatic collapse/expand no longer changes that unit's state.
If a parent is auto-collapsed and later auto-expanded, a child that was manually expanded should reappear in its expanded state.
The UI provides options to:
Reset a particular unit back to automatic behavior.
Reset all units to automatic behavior.
Main window behavior:
The main window controls the map scale used for auto-collapse decisions:
If the main window is showing PVD, all other windows (including Stealth/PVD) follow the main window's map scale for automatic collapse/expand.
If the main window is a Stealth view (no map scale), automatic collapse/expand is effectively disabled.
3D Aggregate Display Options
In 3D, aggregate display is further controlled by "Show Unit Icon", "Show Leaf Nodes", and "Show Ghosted in 3D".
Show Unit Icon (3D Only)
When a unit is collapsed to a level that has subordinates:
A unit icon (aggregate symbol) is drawn in 3D.
Effects:
Fully collapsed battery → shows the battery unit icon.
Expand All (down to entities) → no unit icons for those levels; only entities are visible (subject to other settings).
Intermediate collapses (e.g., platoon level) → show the unit icon at the level that has subordinates.
Show subordinate entities (3D) (Previously Show Leaf Nodes (3D))
Behavior:
This option applies to entity-type objects (leaf-level entities).
When enabled:
Entity models are shown regardless of the aggregate's collapse state.
Symbol decorations and entity indicators (e.g., blue selection circles) are visible on those entities.
It does not show additional unit icons for subordinate units when they are collapsed.
Keyboard Shortcuts (VRF)
In VRF, the following shortcuts operate on the selected unit or entity in the scene:
X – Expand
O – Collapse
Typical usage example:
Fully collapsed battery → press X to expand to the next level.
Press X again to expand further down to subordinate levels.
Press O to collapse back up toward higher-level echelons.
Note: Behavior in the objects list and in the scene may differ slightly, because some intermediate echelons are not directly selectable in the scene.
Tooltips for Collapse/Expand Actions
The tooltip descriptions for aggregate actions are:
Collapse - "Collapses immediate superior of this unit such that the superior's subordinates are hidden (or ghosted) on the map and the superior shown."
Collapse All - "Collapses the entire hierarchical tree this unit is part of such that all subordinates are hidden (or ghosted) on the map and the highest superior is shown."
Expand - "Expands this unit such that any immediate subordinates are shown on the map and this unit is hidden (as well as this unit's superiors)."
Expand All - "Expands the entire hierarchical tree this unit is part of such that all superiors are hidden on the map and all their subordinates shown."