Michael - Would it be possible to have a circular selection area? Just like the make a circle from center command but with selection internal of circle or external of circle.

Start command
plot center
plot diameter
mouse inside of circle would select contents, right click to close tool
mouse outside of circle selects things outside of boundary circle, right click to close tool

I do a lot of radial arrangements and cylindrical components that are nested in each other and it would save a lot of selection time this way.

I believe that is in the wish list from the beginning ;)

Yes, blender has one circular selection feature in that fashion. (by pressing "b" "b" in edit mode)

You can adjust the selection diameter with the mousewheel, everything inside the circle is selected while clicking.
Middle click deselect in the same way.

I like the instant action "move and select" aspect of it (a bit like the swipe feature in the style browser in Moi), touching objects as you got with an adjustable target.
I know it's designed for vertex selection but it's a darn quick method.


Marc

Hi Grendel, I added it in to the wishlist with a link back to this thread.

What should be done for objects that are partially inside and partially outside of the circle?

Also one other question - instead of having a special select circle command, what do you think about having a command that would take any previously drawn closed curve as the selection shape? That way you could do a lot of additional shapes like an ellipse or whatever.

It would make for some more steps though, since you would draw in the shape and then probably delete it afterwards, although possibly the selection command could auto delete it?

- Michael

>>>Also one other question - instead of having a special select circle command, what do you think about having a command that would take any previously drawn closed curve as the selection shape? >>>


Holy cow BatMan!

I was thinking anything partially in would be selected if internal was selected and anything partially out if external was selected.

On the any close curve shape I am struggling to see a use for it without alot of forethought. If I had something with allot of unique selection criteria I guess it would be handy.

Hi Grendel, one thing that might be more typical would be to have a "deselect inside" mode that would be used instead of a "select everything outside" mode.

That way you could do a "select everything outside" by doing a select all + deselect inside the circle, and you could also do other things like make several swiss cheese like empty selection areas instead of only one deselected area.


> On the any close curve shape I am struggling to see a use
> for it without alot of forethought. If I had something with allot
> of unique selection criteria I guess it would be handy.

Well, the part that could be good about it would be that it would cover selection by a circle as well. Would it be too weird if you had to draw the selection circle beforehand as a regular curve object?

Otherwise, if doing a kind of "drag a selection circle" mode like you were mentioning originally, it would probably be something that would occur in screen space with a drag of the mouse, so probably there would not be specific radius values and stuff available for that.

But being based off of a curve would let you use any variety of object snaps or drawing tools to build the outline...

- Michael

Screen space tool was what I was thinking, I was just going off what I thought of for the sequence of mouse gestures not an actual radius input value. I am sure it would be quicker to just do it in screen space rather than draw out a curve just to be a reference for the command.

Hot Key circle select
pick center LMB
drag radius LMB
select in or out RMB In or Out could be a visual arrow cue like you use for the image planes.

Now that I think about it the drag radius LMB step would just be a reference for another radius value that would determine inside or outside selection.