From the course: AutoCAD 2024 Essential Training

Selecting objects - AutoCAD Tutorial

From the course: AutoCAD 2024 Essential Training

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Selecting objects

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- [Instructor] We're starting another chapter now and we're going to start looking at how we can modify objects in an AutoCAD drawing and for that reason, we've got a new drawing for you that you can download from the library to follow along with the videos. Now, this drawing is called Office Layout.dwg and you can see it on the screen. It's a simple office layout with some very simple objects to go into the office layout. So you'll notice there we have a little desk, a plant, a very dated-looking computer, and a little executive chair. They're all on the appropriate layers. Now, before we even start modifying this drawing, what we're going to do is look at how we select objects in AutoCAD. You'll start to find that there are various ways of selecting objects in AutoCAD. Now, one of the quickest ways is to move the crosshair with the little pick box, hover over the object, click on it like that, that picks on object like that and you can see that as an AutoCAD block because it's only got the one little blue grip right there. Now, I'll just hit Escape there to deselect that object. Now, what I can do is select all of the objects. I'll just click on each one and you'll notice there that they're all selected like so. Now, that's a default function in AutoCAD controlled by your options. I'll just hit Escape a couple of times to deselect the objects again. If I right-click and go to Options now, on the shortcut menu, which you should be used to by now, and go to the Selection tab there. You'll notice that we've got this one here, Use Shift to add to selection. You'll notice the box is unticked, the checkbox is unticked and you need to leave it that way. I'll just OK that because that means that I can select like this, and then if I want to deselect an object, I just hold down Shift, click on the object and it deselects it from the selection set like so. If I just hit Escape again, right-click and go to Options again, in the Selection tab, if I switch that Use Shift to add to selection on by ticking the checkbox and I'll OK that now, watch what happens. I click on that one and then I click on that one. Can you see the selection is moved from object to object and if I want to add objects to the selection set, I've then got to hold down Shift and click on each one like that. I'll just hit Escape to deselect the objects, right-click and go back to Options and untick the Use Shift to add selection checkbox. Make sure that's unticked in your Selection tab in your Options. I'll click on OK again to make sure that we're back to where we were. Now, obviously, we don't want to select everything one by one. If we've got lots of different objects to select, we want to be able to select them kind of in one go. Now, there's two ways of doing this. You can use what is called a window selection or a crossing selection. So if I put my crosshair up here, left-click, and release the mouse button, and then drag the window over all the objects that I want to be selected, can you see they're all encompassed by the blue crossing window? If I left-click again, they're all selected because I've used a window selection to select them. I'll just hit Escape now a couple of times to deselect them. Now, if I go from the top right this time, click, release the mouse button and drag, I get a green window with a dashed outline. This is a crossing selection, and as I come across, can you see the objects only need to be crossed by the objects? They don't need to be all in that green boundary. Some of them are, the chair for obvious reasons, but if I click there, can you see they're all selected? So if you are crossing, the objects only have to be crossed by that green selection window. If you're using the window selection the other way, from left to right, the blue one, they all have to be inside that boundary to be selected. I'll just hit Escape a couple of times to deselect the objects. Now, when we've done those two selection windows, both window and crossing, we've done a left-click and released the mouse button. What happens if you don't release the mouse button? If I click and hold and drag, can you see I get this funny shape like this? It's known as a lasso. So I can lasso around the objects like that. Again, that's a window blue lasso, so that means the objects have to be inside that lasso and if I go the other way, if I come up to the right and click and drag, can you see I'm getting a blue again like that? Does depend on direction. So you see I'm getting a blue one there, and you can make it look as weird as you like, as you can see. So if I left-click up there again and hold down the mouse button and I come this way, can you see that's a crossing lasso? So the lasso only has to go through the objects. Can you see I've crossed all of them? They're not encompassed by the green lasso like that. Now, that's if you do a left-click and hold the mouse button. Now, that lasso function is available in AutoCAD and is available in probably, I think it's about the last four versions of AutoCAD. I'll just hit Escape to deselect the objects. Again, if we right-click and go to Options, in the Selection tab, Allow press and drag for Lasso function. There it is there. Now, by default, it's normally ticked. If you don't like it and you just like the regular window selection and crossing selection, just untick the Allow press and drag for Lasso box in your Options. It's up to you, I leave it on and I do sometimes use it, but not often. I'll OK that now, so remember, it's a click and release and then drag and click again for that type of selection. Hit Escape to deselect, and then it's a click and a hold and a drag for the lasso selection like that. You'll notice only the objects inside the blue ones get selected and then if I left-click this way and go the other way, that lasso, as you can see, I can just take it through the objects like that, and you can see there that it quite happily selects all the objects. I'll hit Escape again to deselect. So that's some of the selection tools that allow you to select your objects when you're working in AutoCAD. Now, there's lots of other selection tools available in AutoCAD as well so you might want to check some of those out. If you go to the Help screens in AutoCAD and look up object selection, you can go through a lot of them and maybe investigate them a bit more. So I suggest you maybe do that at the end of this chapter.

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