Selection Methods

I'm glad you asked . . . because I learned something about loop selection. But basically I use window/crossing and selection filter, with selection of transparent components using Shift. That last is very handy. I do a lot of machine assemblies where I want to view insides by making parts transparent from time to time.

Hey, I sent you a personal email with an unrelated question. Gimme a holler (via email).

'Sporky'

Do our favorites have to be on the list? I like the newish Select Other tool... Click faces that are in the way, even if they're not in the area you clicked originally, then you can use edge selection tools on the previously-hidden edges.

Of course they all take some thinkin to remember when to use shift and/or CTRL!

Hey, Kevin!

Good to hear from you.

You know, I just can't get the hang of the new Select Other. I find I lose patience with it almost immediately and either hide parts or rotate and squint through a crack in the assembly to find the face I want. The old way seemed clunkier, but I knew how to get what I wanted with it. It always seems like the face I want turns out to be the last one in the list, except when I remember that rule and then it turns out to be in some random place in the middle of the list.

Do you have any hints for clumsy / lazy folk like me who haven't figured it out yet to its best advantage?

Thanks,

Matt

Yeh, it seems more awkward than earlier, but I still vote for it as being one of the most useful selection features. I should have noted that I use it all the time, especially for Mating in Assemblies.

'Sporky'

Answered your email reply, by the way -- seems like your mail receipt is slow.

I have a part with an extrude, a cut and a pattern. If I Select Other on the front face, I get a face listed, then the name of the body, then the back hidden face. If I Select Other on an edge with another edge behind it, I get two edges listed without a way to know which is which.

I guess it's an advantage that you can select bodies from the Select Other list. I probably wouldn't mind it if I took some time to figure out what it does.

(I still never received your original email, but I got the copy of it in the second one you sent. Did you send the original to @verizon.net or @dezignstuff.com?)

I sent it to dezignstuff.com, and looking back the address looks just the same as the others I sent, except that I put "Matt Lombard" in quotes before the email address, but the actual address is between symbols which makes what comes before basically invisible to email clients.

matt wrote: ...(clip)...

Matt,

It sounds like you may be trying to use it like the previous Select Other tool, when it really is so different it should maybe be named something new like Hide Faces. I have the best luck thinking of it as a quick way to hide some faces, letting me dig into whats underneath. The list box is the least important part of the tool for me; only used when two faces are the same size and coincident and I can't tell which one I'm lookin at on the screen. I rarely use Select Other on edges, and almost never if they're in direct line with each other. It is nice to use it to hide a big face and pick edges underneath, however. And as Sporkman mentioned, it's great for mating, particularly when your previous mate has made a bolt disappear into the inside of a big part. Just keep right-clicking big faces until your tiny part appears, then pick anything on the part you want.

Anyway, enough lecturing. Good luck with your presentation!

-Kevin

Ok, so now I get to ask what I am doing wrong such that I have never really liked this new version. I do a RMB/Select other and get the box. I do a RMB on faces that I don't want and they go hidden. Fine. So now I see the one that I want and I am looking directly at it because I have hidden the stuff over it. I do a left-click on it, and I get some other face selected on the part that I had already hidden. What am I doing wrong????????

WT

You're using a feature with a known bug. Long ago I started mousing over the items in the list and watching for the highlight because I found it faster than drilling down and selecting (and partially because of the bug).

Dale,

Could you describe that bug in more detail?

Matt

In the first few releases since the new select other method showed up, there was a problem where sometimes a face hidden by select other could still be selected if you click on-screen where the face had been. IIRC, this was somewhere around 05 sp1 & 2. I haven't seen the problem in a while., Also, I never noticed a correlation to any circumstances which would reliably trigger it. Usually, it worked normally.

SW2005 SP5.0

I have seen it fail almost all the time for me, but I don't use that portion of it much since it doesn't work well. I usually find that the way that I work, my desired face is the second from the bottom in the list. I run the cursor over it to make sure and then select it there.

Matt, the issue is that a face that is hidden by RMB is still selected with the LMB click, rather than the one that is still showing and was under the cursor at the time of the click.

WT