The story is told of the great NFL football coach Vince Lombardi. At the first team meeting each year, he would hold up a football and say, “Gentlemen, this is a football.” It was his way of reminding his players—rookies and veterans alike—that success begins with a clear understanding of the basics. Successful CAD operators are those who have mastered the basics. Object selection is one of the basics. Let’s continue.

Last month we looked at some of the system level settings that control how AutoCAD’s selection sets function. One system variable I forgot to mention is HIGHLIGHT. It’s not one that you would use very often (can’t remember the last time I needed it!), but for the sake of thoroughness I felt obliged to mention it. This variable controls whether or not the entities that you select appear dotted (“highlighted”) when selected. It usually helps!

Most of AutoCAD’s modify commands present you with a “Select objects:” prompt, unless you’ve already selected the objects. Anyone care to guess how many standard different selection options there are? At the “Select objects:” prompt, you have 18 standard options. I bet you didn’t know that! I’ll even number them as we go just to prove it.

First, you can simply pick the desired entity directly (1). Pick a point on the entity and it will be highlighted. If the point you pick does not lie on an entity, then AutoCAD switches into “implied windowing” mode; pick the points corners left-to-right to start a “window” selection, or right-to-left to start a “crossing window” selection. Implied windowing is a default AutoCAD setting. We mentioned it last month. In the unlikely event that it is turned off, you can use the “Auto” (2) option to enable it for the current selection.

This feature is normally quite useful. There are times, however, when you may want to force a window selection mode. There are five windowing options: Window, Crossing Window, Box, Window Polygon, and Crossing Polygon. By typing “W” (3) or “C” (4) at the “Select objects:” prompt, you won’t have to be as precise with your pick points and you can pick the corners in any direction. The Window option will only select objects that lie completely within the windowed area. The crossing window will select both what’s inside and anything that the window touches, or crosses. The “Box” (5) selection is another option. This is sort of a combination window, similar to implied windowing, but without the “pick a point” option.

If you don’t like being confined to a rectangular selection window, you can create a “free-form” window using either the “WP” (window polygon) (6) or “CP” (crossing polygon) (7) options. These take a time or two to get used to, but they are quite powerful for creating complex selections.

Typing an “L” (8) will select the last entity created. Usually. The exception is if the last entity created is not visible on the screen. If you pan, zoom, or turn a layer off such that the last created entity is not visible on the screen, then this will the most recently created entity that is on the screen. So, using the “last” selection option may not always return the entity you last created. For the most reliable last entity, use AutoLISP’s (entlast) function. (Now, if you really want to get technical, we could count this as a separate selection option, putting our total options at 19.)

We mentioned highlighting earlier. Not all selections options cause the entities to highlight. If you use the “M” (multiple) (9) selection option as you select objects, none of them will be highlighted until you hit Enter. This supposedly speeds up the selection process, but for average day-to-day use, you’ll never notice it.

Speaking of speeding things up, the “SI” (single) (10) option can help. Normally after each selection, AutoCAD continues prompting you for additional selections. If you are finished selecting, then you must hit an Enter. With the “Single” (type “SI”), there are no additional prompts. This was used in some of AutoCAD’s old menus for “quick” functions, like a quick erase.

Well, that takes us through more than half of the selection options. See? There is a way to get what you want. As far as AutoCAD entities go anyway.

Submitted by Chris Lindner, a veteran AutoCAD user, consultant, trainer, and AUGI Director in 2003.