Dedicated Registered AutoCAD Workers
Users Group - Fort Wayne, IN area

Thank you to Greg Shearer and Matt Lennon for suggesting the topic of selection sets. It is hard to believe that there is so much out there that we may not even be aware of for one of the most basic things in AutoCAD. We all do selecting of objects; it's one of the primary requirements to do any editing or modifying of our drawings. As our drawings get more complex, we find the need for better tools to perform the selections with the least amount of effort.

On the most basic side we use the Auto, Multiple, and Box selection which allows us to select a single object by picking it or using a window or crossing if our first pick is not over an object. If that is the case, we see that we get a solid rectangle as we move the cursor to the right indicating a Window selection and a dashed line going to the left indicating a Crossing window. Object must be included completely within the rectangle (window) to be selected with Window, but will be selected if any portion of the object is included by or intersected by the window in Crossing. Pretty basic, but cool stuff. The Box selection simply allows this basic Crossing/Window selection option. If the W or P options are picked, it does not make a difference which way the pick box is moved, it will act in the manner of the selection option.

Another couple of selections that we use a lot are Last which selects the last entity that we created on the current display and Previous which repeats the selection set from the last command.

WP (Windows Polygon) and CP (Crossing Polygon) work much like W and P but you are not limited to the shape of the rectangle. You create the polygon by selecting points to create a shape and complete that polygon by right clicking or hitting the enter key. Note that the polygon may not have intersecting sides.

We looked at the Fence option. Fence is like CP except that it does not close the selection set. This means that the items must be crossed by the "fence" to be selected. This is especially helpful when used within the trim command.

One of the coolest selections is the ALL option. This selects all geometry not on a frozen or locked layer. Note that you cannot choose A as a shortcut since A is used to go back to Add geometry to a selection set if you were using the Remove option. Remove will allow you to take geometry from the selection set. You may also do this now by pressing the shift key and picking the selected geometry.

SIngle and Multiple are two seldom used options. They are typically only used when the user has chosen to work with the "shift to add" option enabled (pickadd sysvar).

We can also assign geometry to a group and select items by typing the group name. We hope to look more at that in the future.

The last simple option is Undo. Similar to the Undo command, Undo works in the selection sets by unselecting the last selected geometry one selection at a time.

Other topics that we looked at were to use the CTRL key to cycle through our pick choices. We also looked at the options of noun verb and verb noun selections. Typically we function in the verb noun pattern. An example would be to do a Move and pick the item. Noun verb is when you make the selection and then enter the command. We often do this by mistake when we have geometry selected and then hit erase and our drawing gets smaller. You know what I am talking about!

Lastly we played around with Quick Select, SSX, and Filter. SSX allowed us to make quick selections of geometry with similar properties. Quick select works the same, but with a much prettier interface. Filter has a lot more power, but also takes a bit of patience. The biggest thing we saw was that the "bylayer" modifier can cause some unexpected results in our selections.

A few reminders on the tips. If you are using filters, ssx, etc. try using those as commands and then issue your command and use the Previous selection set. It keeps things much simpler to follow. That said, know we can put an apostrophe before filter and ssx and use them transparently.

I hope that the lesson was a good one for those who attended and that this page can act as a reminder of the things we looked at.

Happy Selection Sets!

Byron

What is the difference between C and W? How about WP and F? What is the difference between SSX and Filter and how do you use them? The last topic we might look at is Résumé's. While not really a CAD skill, it is something that applies to us at different times in our careers. This would be a great group to get ideas and feedback from to update your resume'. We have several business owners and managers that attend who often have to look thru lots of résumé's. Who better to give you advice on what they'd like to see (without fabricating something of course).