To say XD has an isolation mode at all feels wrong. In Illustrator, while I'm using isolation mode, I can't select anything outside of what is isolated. Working with a fairly long scroll group can become really tedious in XD.

Agreed - Isolation mode in XD is not "sticky" enough - it's too easy to bounce out of isolation mode. In the last 3 hours of working on a fairly standard layout with components and groups, I have been double-clicking constantly to bounce back into a nested group etc. It's so easy to bounce out of isolation mode - for example just deselecting an item (so you can see the result w/o bounding box) pops you all the way out. This is especially annoying when dealing with multiple levels of nesting!

There's no need to re-invent the wheel here. The design pattern for Isolation Mode established by AI is fine for most of us UX professionals, so just emulate that and I'll bet most users will be quite comfortable with the solution.

I really would be happy about this too! The isolation mode of XD lacks so much of what Illustrator has had for ages.

As a user creating multiple grouped elements (including symbols and repeat grids) that have backgrounds objects behind them, not being able to isolate groups makes for a frustrating experience. I click to drag and multi-select elements in a group but it often kicks me out of group editing because I clicked the bg object behind it.

Hi Elaine,

Not clear what "no status" state means, could you clarify?

Currently this issue is my biggest complaint with XD - the in-ability to select multiple items or portions of multiple items (direct select vs. group select as implemented in Illustrator) prevents any type of drawing/layout work from occurring directly in XD. Simply unusable in it's current state. All drawing and layout adjustments must be done in Illustrator and pasted into XD which is not the most efficient or delightful experience.

Currently, within XD you cannot draw a marquee to select multiple objects from within a group as you suggest below. Clicking anywhere outside of a group object will exit the group, or worse, will select some object outside the group. This makes it impossible to complete/modify layouts within XD.

IMO, the solution would be to make XD's isolation mode function the same way as Illustrator's.

@iain, if you can start your marquee select from within the group, you should be able to marquee select. But thanks for sharing the screencast.

@Elaine, here's a screencast of the issue in my experience: http://www.screencast.com/t/Hxmu2Mia.

The two buttons are within a group, when I double click into the group, I can select one one the buttons, but if I try to drag and select from outside the artboard or from on top of locked element, it exits the group.

Click-dragging only works when you find a place on the canvas where no object is placed in order to start click-dragging, which is quite seldom. Otherwise you just select the object below and exit isolation mode. So double clicking to leave isolation mode would be rather essential! And I a agree with Prabin, make it even more like in Illusatrator.

Agree with Praline, problem is not solved. I cannot lasso/drag select or even shift+click multiple items in isolation mode which is very important. Double click as action for exiting isolation mode works well since it does not overlap with any interactions you may have with objects in the group while in isolation mode. Very annoying currently in that I can not work in isolation mode at all in any effective way... would characterize this as a defect.

Nope, that does not solve the original problem at all. If you leave isolation mode with a single click, you can't drag a selection rectangle to select stuffs inside the isolation mode as that would immediately exit the isolation mode. The blue border to indicate isolation mode is also not good enough. Please make it exactly like what you have in Illustrator.

Yes, thank you! That's enough.
BTW it's a bit different experience but it solves the problem, thank you Demian and the Adobe team!