AutoCAD® 2012 FOR DUMMIES®

Grab It

Part of AutoCAD's editing flexibility comes from its object-selection flexibility. For example, command-first editing offers 16 selection modes! (I describe the most useful ones in this chapter.) Don't worry, though; you can get by most of the time with three selection modes, each of which I describe in this section:

• Selecting a single object by picking it
• Selecting multiple objects by enclosing them in a window selection box or polygon
• Selecting multiple objects by enclosing them in a crossing selection box or polygon

One-by-one selection

The most obvious way to select objects is to pick (by clicking) them one at a time. One or more objects that are selected and ready for editing are called a selection set. You can build a selection set cumulatively with this pick-one-object-at-a-time selection mode, but this cumulative convention may be different from what you're used to. In most Windows programs, if you select one object and then another, the first object is deselected, and the second one selected; only the object you select last remains selected. In AutoCAD, all the objects you select, one at a time, remain selected and are added to the selection set, no matter how many objects you pick. (You can change this behavior to make AutoCAD work like other Windows programs by turning on the Use Shift to Add to Selection option on the Option dialog box's Selection tab, but I suggest that you don't change it.) Most editing commands affect the entire group of selected objects. ...