QUICK SELECT

e. Filter / Quick Select – The last and the most important but least exploited option which is the subject matter of this article uses the filtering technique with a specified criterion to select/deselect objects.

We will go through all the TABS in the Quick Select Dialogue Box but before proceeding let’s take a look at its advantages over the conventional methods.

1. As stated above the first advantage is user can select as well as deselect objects with this option
2. It’s a great technique for separating and classifying clustered objects
3. The visibility constraint is taken good care of, particularly in overlapping objects
4. No other selection method can pick the exact object in a huge and complicated drawing
5. In other methods user has to rely on his/her sight rather than the object properties for selection.

The list can be as big as we can stretch it. But let’s not waste more time and let’s introduce ourselves to a magical tool called Quick Select.

You can use object properties or object types to include objects in a selection set, or to exclude them.

Using either Quick Select (QSELECT) from the Properties palette or the Object Selection Filters dialog box (FILTER), you can filter selection sets by property (such as color) and by object type. For example, you can select all of the red circles in a drawing without selecting any other object, or you can select all objects except the red circles.

With Quick Select, you can quickly define a selection set based on filtering criteria that you specify, and if an Autodesk or a third-party application was used to add a feature classification to an object, you can select objects by classification property. With object selection filters, you can name and save filters for future use.

With either Quick Select or object selection filters, if you want to filter your selection set based on color, linetype, or lineweight, first consider whether these properties are set to BYLAYER for any objects in your drawing. For example, an object may appear red because its color is set to BYLAYER and the layer color is red.

Menu: Tools Quick Select...At the Command prompt, enter qselect.
Shortcut menu: End any active commands, right-click in the drawing area, and choose Quick Select.
Command entry: qselect
Specifies the filtering criteria and how you want to create the selection set from that criteria.

Apply To
Applies the filtering criteria to the entire drawing or to the current selection set (if one exists). To select a group of objects to which you want to apply the filtering criteria, use the Select Objects button. When you have finished selecting objects, press ENTER to redisplay the dialog box. ‘Apply To’ is set to Current Selection.
If ‘Append to Current Selection Set’ is selected, the filtering criteria are applied to the entire drawing.

Select Objects
Temporarily closes the Quick Select dialog box so that you can select the objects to which you want to apply the filter criteria. Press ENTER to return to the Quick Select dialog box. The ‘Apply To’ box is changed to show Current Selection. The Select Objects button is available only when you select ‘Include In New Selection Set’ and clear ‘Append to Current Selection Set’.

Object Type
Specifies the type of objects to include in the filtering criteria. If the filtering criteria are being applied to the entire drawing, the Object Type list includes all object types, including custom. Otherwise, the list includes only the object types of the selected objects.
If an application such as Autodesk Map was used to add a feature classification to an object, you can select a classification.
If you select an object type not supported by AutoCAD LT, it is greyed out in the Properties palette and is not available for changes.

Properties
Specifies the object property for the filter. This list includes all searchable properties for the selected object type. The property you select determines the options available in Operator and Value. If an application such as Autodesk® Map™ was used to add a feature classification to an object, you can select a classification property.

Operator
Controls the range of the filter. Depending on the selected property, options may include Equals, Not Equal To, Greater Than, Less Than, and *Wildcard Match. Greater Than and Less Than are not available for some properties. *Wildcard Match is available only for text fields that can be edited. For information about the available wild-card characters, see the table in Filter and Sort the List of Layers in the User's Guide.

Value
Specifies the property value for the filter. If known values for the selected property are available, Value becomes a list in which you can choose a value. Otherwise, enter a value.

How to Apply
Specifies whether you want the new selection set to include or exclude objects that match the specified filtering criteria. Select ‘Include in New Selection Set’ to create a new selection set composed only of objects that match the filtering criteria. Select ‘Exclude from New Selection Set’ to create a new selection set composed only of objects that do not match the filtering criteria.

Append to Current Selection Set
Specifies whether the selection set created by QSELECT replaces or is appended to the current selection set.

Note – QSELECT supports custom objects (objects created by another application) and their properties. If a custom object uses properties other than AutoCAD LT properties, the custom object's source application must be running in order for the properties to be available to QSELECT.

We will learn more options of QSELECT tomorrow, stay tuned...!