Blender Equivalent to Element in Max

In 3DS Max, in addition to the standard selections (vertices, edges, faces), there is also Element that seems to select all contiguous faces. I can’t find the equivalent in Blender, and I was wondering if it actually exists, or there is another workflow to achieve the same results. Thanks.

There is no subobject such as element but you can just select a single or multiple subelements - for example a single vertex - and then press “L” for “linked” and it will select all continuous subobjects.

Hi.
Not everyone uses Max. Maybe if you better describe what that feature does and you show some animated gif or video, even people who do not use Max and do not know that feature could help you.

Hello there,
Lumpen is correct. Same behavior can be simulated with clicking on “L” keyboard. Go to edit mode select face for example and hover with mouse over the part you want to “element like 3ds max select” and click “L” and it will select whole part. This works with deselect aswell (holding a shift and pressing “L”).

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Long term max user here:

You can also take your existing input selection and press [ Ctrl ] + [ L ] to extend the selection to the element. Just pressing [ L ] acts almost like a mouse click where you aim with your mouse and keep pressing L to extend your selection by elements.

If you are using Blender 2.79 and not yet 2.8 I highly recommend the ‘SB_1234Select’ addon. It simulates the Max shortcuts where you press the keys 1-3 and 4 to switch the sub modes in Edit mesh or inside the UV editor.

With Blender 2.8 they adopted this shortcut type as default :slight_smile: and so there is no need for this addon.

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Good point,
and that addon looks nice, I simply changed keybounds to 1, 2, 3 (vertex, edge, face) in blender 2.79 in edit mode. In 2.8 like you stated it is default.

Heh, didn´t know that. Thanks. :smiley:

Outstanding! Thank you to all of you for your help. I tried it out and it worked exactly the way I was looking for.

As an aside, is 2.8 stable enough now for basic modelling work (manipulating polygons, texture painting …)?

2.8 is fine for a lot of things, but no addons and still a lot of changes going on. If you are in no rush then wait till beta is up (in like 2 weeks or so atleast that was a statement) and then go for it.

I’m finishing now second interior for clients in 2.8. The only thing that I’m missing is impoting CAD files. In last two weeks I had only one crush. So as for me - stable.

@Fallirini and @ajarosz, thanks! If you’ll permit me one last question on this topic, it was mentioned above that this shortcut has been added to Blender 2.8, but I don’t see it – which means I’m likely looking in the wrong area.

This screen shot:

Capture

only shows the standard three options (vertex, edge and face). Do I need to do something to toggle this option on, or is the shortcut in another menu? Thanks again for all of your help.

@Dito thanks. I was expecting it to be a button. That clears it up.

Unfortunately, it isn’t. I made a proposal https://blender.community/c/rightclickselect/fFbbbc/ to change it.