AutoCAD Quick Select

 AutoCAD Quick Select

I have written about several ways you can use to select objects in AutoCAD (10 actually). Well, there’s more. Sometimes can’t select only from visible objects. When they are all get to crowded, we need to filter out our selection based on their properties. Yes, we can do it using filter. But this time, let’s just use Quick Select.

You can find Quick Select button on home tab, utilities panel. Or if you are command line lovers, you can type QSELECT.

This will open a dialog box where you can select your objects properties.

qselect dialog

Selecting Property

First, apply to. You can filter objects in entire drawing or by your selection.

Object type will show you list of object type in your drawing. If you only have one type of object, then you will get only one type of object.

Properties, self explanatory. Select which property you want to filter. Only one. You can’t have multiple selection here. If you want to filter by several properties, you need to use QSELECT several times.

Operator, I think you might already familiar with it. Value, the property value.

So, if you want to select all lines that’s not in layer Annotation, how do we use the operator and value? We use ‘not equal’ in operator and ‘Annotation’ in value.

Include/Exclude Selection

Let’s take a look to ‘how to apply’ area. You can include or exclude from your new selection set. Do you want to add objects that meet your criteria? Then select include. Or if you already select several objects, and you want to exclude objects that meet your criteria, exclude them.

The last option: append to current selection set. As I mention before, we can’t have multiple properties (or objects) selection at once. So if you want to select all lines AND text with red color, you need to use QSELECT twice. When you use it for the second time, don’t forget to activate the append to current selection set.

Example

If you want to select all lines, with linetype 1, and color 5 how do we do that?

First activate QSELECT, filter them by linetype. Include them in new selection set. Click OK. Now you have selected all lines with that linetype.

Now let’s do it again. We need to filter them again. Activate QSELECT, then filter them by color. You need to include objects that meet this category, so don’t forget to select include.

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About the Author

Application Engineer. Jakarta, Indonesia. 5+ years experience as CAD engineering application. AutoCAD, MicroStation, Inventor, Autodesk Revit Architecture 2010 certified professional, and certified CATIA part design specialist. Here are some topics I am currently focusing on

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