Organize objects

In a scene you may want to associate related objects together. You can accomplish this in a number of ways.

Groups – Lets you perform basic selection and transformations on a collection of objects as if they were one without actually combining the meshes. For more information see Group objects together.
Sets and Partitions – A set is collection of objects which can be transformed and selected as one without altering the hierarchy of the scene. A partition is a collection of exclusive sets such that no object can be contained in multiple sets within the same partition. For more information see Sets and partitions, Create and edit sets, or Create nested sets.
Display layers – A collection of objects which are transformed and selected individually. You can make layers invisible which reduces the amount of objects in your scene that may obscure your view. You can also template or reference a layer making all the objects within it unselectable but still present in the scene. For more information see Organize objects on display layers.
Render layers - You can assign any object to multiple layers with a different material on each layer. This lets you create multiple images for each frame, from any combination of Maya's renderers. For more information see Render layer overview.
Containers - A collection of nodes represented by a single container node. You can publish a subset of attributes from the internal nodes to the container node.