> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.abbyy.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Hypotheses for Group elements

> How ABBYY FlexiLayout Studio forms hypotheses for Group elements, with the full property table from chain quality to search area intersection caveats.

Elements may be grouped together to form Group elements. This allows the program to consider the grouped elements as one entity for which it has already formulated a single hypothesis (which actually consists of the hypotheses for each constituent element).

The program examines the combinations of hypotheses for the constituent elements of the group and selects only the best (their number is set by the user). These hypotheses are then used to formulate hypotheses about subordinate elements.

<Note>
  The tree of elements itself may be regarded as one Group element.
</Note>

## Shared search constraints for a group

A Group element allows you to create a single search constraint for all the constituent elements. The search area for a particular constituent element will be the intersection of the search area specified for the constituent element and the search area specified for the entire group.

<Warning>
  The intersection of the search area of a constituent element and the search area of the group may be empty. If the intersection is empty, the constituent element will not be found. Therefore, either specify only simple relations for Group elements, for example, `Above: PageRect.Top + PageRect.Height/2;` (that is, look for the element in the upper half of the image), or do not specify any relations at all, so as to avoid any contradictions between relations describing the search area of the group and relations describing the search area of a constituent element.
</Warning>

## Group hypothesis properties

A **Group** hypothesis has the following properties:

| Property                | Description                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               |
| ----------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Element name**        | The full name of the element.                                                                                                                                                                                                                             |
| **Page**                | The number of the page on which the element was detected.                                                                                                                                                                                                 |
| **Surrounding rect**    | The coordinates of the rectangle which surrounds the region of the hypothesis.                                                                                                                                                                            |
| **Width**               | The width of the region of the hypothesis.                                                                                                                                                                                                                |
| **Height**              | The height of the region of the hypothesis.                                                                                                                                                                                                               |
| **Detected**            | Shows whether the object described by the element has been found (`true`) or whether a null hypothesis has been formulated (`false`).                                                                                                                     |
| **From the best path**  | Shows whether the found hypothesis belongs to the best path in the tree of hypotheses (`true`) or not (`false`).                                                                                                                                          |
| **Pre-search quality**  | How well the hypothesis matches the properties of the element specified by the settings in the **Properties** dialog box and by the code in the **Advanced pre-search relations** field.                                                                  |
| **Post-search quality** | The quality of the hypothesis after the conditions in the **Advanced post-search relations** field have been applied.                                                                                                                                     |
| **Chain quality**       | The quality of the chain of hypotheses, from the first subelement of the group to the current subelement. Chain quality is calculated by multiplying the qualities of all the subelements in the chain and is used to compare rival chains of hypotheses. |

## Related topics

* [Group elements](/flexi-capture/fls/template/elements-compound)
* [Search area](/flexi-capture/fls/template/search-constraints)
* [Additional search constraints](/flexi-capture/fls/template/advanced-constraints)