Sorry folks. I couldn’t figure this out with searches, but it might just not exist.
In Rhino, you can select left to right and it only selects things you have completely surrounded. It also has an added option that if you need to start your selection while over top existing data, if you hold Alt it ignores that data so you don’t drag it. If you drag right to left, then it selects anything under your mouse.
In Max, there’s just some boxes you can choose to switch if you want to select anything under your drag box, or only if you’ve surrounded an object.
Are any of these options ringing a bell for some sort of tool in Blender? I have some big objects, and lots of small objects. I’m getting tired of either hiding, or deselecting the big objects every time I need to select a bunch of the small objects. I’d like to be doing it more efficiently, if an option exists. (and yes, I know I can switch the larger objects to be not selectable, but I’d still be flipping that back and forth.)
That’s a good idea, and often one I suggest to people. Sometimes selecting the inverse of what you want is easier, then invert. But not in this case.
The objects I want to select are quite small, and at any angle, they are within much larger pieces. It’s a CAD assembly. Current file is 709 objects. Not terrible, but if this were a game model, it would probably be 3 pieces. I’m setting up to do an “exploded view” animation. So I need all the tiny parts.
I really need to learn an efficient way of screen recording and posting so I could just illustrate it better. Every time I do that I seem to run into a different hurdle. Software issues with capture, this forum only accepts files of This type, this host no longer exists, etc. I finally gave up on that.
To think through it, imagine you have a bunch of things you want to select, but you’re also Inside a box. Box selecting is always going to select that box. So if you want to select 15 of the pieces within the group of 700 that are inside that box, there’s not a really great way to select it, from what I can tell. It involves just box selecting, then control deselecting the objects you didn’t intend to select.
In Rhino, 3dsMax, and heck, even PowerPoint, you can switch to a selection mode that will only select things you completely surround. So say you have pieces on a circuit board, that’s also in an assembly. You can just zoom in, box select around the tiny pieces, and it Only selected the tiny pieces. It didn’t also select the circuit board, and the body that the circuit board is in, and the floor the body is on, etc.
Thoughts: It seems to me in that scenario, that it might be best to use the outliner where you can search or set up collections of related objects. Also you can search by name under the select menu, “select pattern” and finally; Is this what your referring to, there are different selection modes?
Hopefully this helps. I created a quick GIF in Rhino. I switched to wireframe so you can see that there are lots of little things. I think it’s just not possible, based on what I found in the manual. But just thought I’d ask in case it’s just hiding somewhere.
So here I started in shaded mode so you can see right away that I’m working Inside the model. I drag select from left to right and it only selects objects I surrounded. Right to left and it selects all I touched. Then I deselected all I touched as well. It seems blender only works on the “everything I touch” method. I was hoping to find the “select surrounded only” option that doesn’t seem to exist.
Those filters are really only replacing the need for holding a modifier key. Useful, but not what this is.
