AutoCAD Tips & Tutorials

Quickly select objects with Quick Select

If picking objects and using window selections doesn't always work for you, you may need a more sophisticated option. Quick Select is the next step up. It lets you quickly set up criteria for selecting objects, such as the type of object or object properties.

You can get to Quick Select in 4 ways:

• Choose Tools> Quick Select.
• With no command active, right-click in the drawing area and choose Quick Select from the shortcut menu.
• Click the Quick Select button in the Properties palette.
• Enter qselect on the command line.

The Quick Select dialog box appears.

Here's how you use this dialog box:

In the Apply To drop-down list, you can apply the selection to the entire drawing (the default) or to a set of selected objects. I fyou use selected objects, the filter will apply only to those objects. For example, you could use a window to select the upper-left corner of a drawing and then apply a filter to that area. To select objects, click the Select Objects button to the right.

In the Object Type drop-down list, choose the type of object that you want to select. You can choose only one type of object. This list contains only objects that exist in the drawing.

In the Properties box, choose the properties that you want to find. Again, you can choose only one property.

In the Operator box, choose an operator, such as equals, not equals, greater than, etc. The options available depend on the property you chose. For example, if you choose Layer, you don't see the greater than option. But if you choose a circle for the object, and radius for the property, you'll see greater than and less than options.

In the Value box, you choose the property's value. For example, if your property is layer, you can choose the layer from the list of layers that exist in your drawing. If your property is radius, for example, you can type a value.

See my tip about using Quick Select for selecting blocks.

In the How to Apply section, you choose to include the filter in the new selection set (the default, and most common choice), or to exclude the filter, which selects everything except objects that fit the filter.

At the bottom, you can also check the Append to Current Selection Set check box. If you already have selected objects and want to add the objects that fit the filter to that selection, check the check box.

When you're done, click OK and your objects are selected. If you realize that you need to start a command first (some commands require that you do this), start the command and use the Previous selection option to re-select the objects.

Don't forget two Express Tools commands:

• FASTSELECT creates a selection set of objects that touch an object that you specify.
• GETSEL creates a selection of objects from object type and layer properties.

Finally, if you need more power, use the FILTER command. It lets you choose more than one object and property type, combine multiple filters, and save filters.

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