From the course: AutoCAD 2023 Essential Training

Selecting objects - AutoCAD Tutorial

From the course: AutoCAD 2023 Essential Training

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Selecting objects

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- [Instructor] We're starting a new chapter now where we're going to be looking at modifying objects in our AutoCAD drawings. Now you can see it's a very simple office layout in the Model tab. We've got some walls there. We've got a door. We've also got a desk, a plant, a computer, and a chair. And it's a really, really basic setup, but it's to get you used to the workflows when you are modifying the objects in your AutoCAD drawings. Now, one of the things that is really important is selecting objects in your AutoCAD drawings. Now you can obviously just move your crosshair over an object. These objects are blocks. You can see that that's a desk, that's a plant, and you can see they've been drawn up and converted to blocks. So if I click on that desk, for example, I've selected it. It has that pale blue color. The grip, the insertion point of the block appears, and it tells me it's on the layer desks up here like so. If I hit Escape, that deselects the object. Same with the plant. I can click on it, it selects it. Same with the computer, it selects it. Same with the chair, it selects it. It's just a quick left click. But there's lots of other selection methods available. The two most common ones are the window selection and the crossing selection. So if I put my crosshair up here, left click and release the mouse button and drag the blue window over everything, and click again, you can see it selects everything that is encompassed by that window. I'll just hit Escape a couple of times just to deselect. If I do it in the other direction, put the crosshair sort of top right there, click, release the mouse button and drag, can you see, I'm still selecting objects even when the window own only crosses the objects. So you'll notice the chair is the only object encompassed by the green crossing selection window. So if I now left click for that left click on the crossing selection window, it still selects everything. So a crossing selection window selects everything in the window, and that is crossed by the window. A blue window selection from left to right, you have to have everything in the window to be selected. If you don't, it won't select them. I'll hit Escape there just to deselect the objects from the selection set. Now there's other different selection methods as well. I'll show you a couple more. If I go to something like Erase up here on the Modify panel that's on the home tab on the ribbon, I'll then get the select objects prompt. If I type F for fence, and then press Enter, I now get asked for my first fence point. So all I've got to do is click and drag the fence, can you see, through each object like so. So if I come down to here, click, and then come up there and click again, those two diagonal fence lines have selected everything. When I press Enter, they're selected. When I press Enter again, they're erased like so. Now the quick way to get those back is to go up here to the Quick Access toolbar and just click on undo once so they come back, obviously you've undone the Erase. So that's the fence method of selecting. Now there's other methods of selecting as well. There's the Lasso method of selecting. Now this is built into later versions of AutoCAD, and you can turn it off. If I go to the right click there, and go to Options, and go to the selection tab in the options' dialogue box, I can turn Lasso off here. It's on by default normally. Now the other reason that I wanted to show you this particular part of the options' dialogue box is you've got Noun/Verb selection, and Use Shift to add to selection. Noun/Verb selection allows you to select an object first and then for example, right click and use the shortcut menu to work on objects. Use Shift to add to selection means if you've got a group of objects to select, you select the first one, hold down Shift, and then add the other objects to the selection set. I don't normally have that one ticked. I just go and click them all, and then select what I want to select. Holding down a Shift key while I'm trying to select, I just find it a bit cumbersome. And by default it's normally off anyway. So there's your Lasso, on or off like so. There's your Use Shift to add to selection, I leave that off, and also Noun/Verb selection, I leave that on. I'll OK that now. So the Lasso, you click and hold and drag. And as you can see, you bring the Lasso around, and it works in the same principles as the window and crossing selection. So anything that is wholly selected by the Lasso there, gets selected. I'll hit Escape to deselect. If I go the other way, so I go up here top right, click, and I go round this way, anything that is crossed by the Lasso gets selected as well. So you see there I was crossing the desk and the chair, but they still got selected. So I'll just hit Escape there just to deselect. You've still got this way of adding objects where you just click on them one by one. But what happens if you've got a selection set after you've selected them, and you want to remove one of the objects from the selection set? Hold down the Shift key, click on the object, see the little minus sign there? Click on it, and it removes the object from the selection set. So I can do that with each of them. So if I see a minus sign there, click, minus sign there, click, minus sign there, click. I've now got nothing selected. So there's various selection methods available to you in AutoCAD. Obviously over time as you get more used to AutoCAD, you'll start using those a lot more commonplace. But obviously at the moment, you're just going to be selecting simple objects 'cause we've got very simple drawings. But you'll start using things like window and crossing a lot more as you start working on more complex drawings in AutoCAD.

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