Tips On Selecting Multiple Objects

In this quick tip, we look at how to use the selection box direction feature to easily select multiple objects. This works in Vectric Aspire, VCarve, and Cut2D.

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Video Transcript:

Hello, everyone. In this lesson, I'm going to show you how to easily select multiple objects. So as you can see in this example project, we have multiple different circles in here. So as you can see, you can select these just by clicking on them.

And if you were to click another one, it would deselect the last one. So in order to select multiple, you have to hold your shift key. And then, while holding shift, you can select multiple objects. And then you can also deselect objects by holding your shift key as well.

But as you can see, this would take a very long time to select all of these. So there is another option as well. Let's click outside of these to deselect all of them. And what you can use is called the selection box, and that works by drawing a box, by clicking and dragging in your screen.

And you can see it will select anything inside the box, but it does matter which direction you draw that box. So as you can see, I just drew that box from left to right, and it selected everything inside the box.

So let's look at an example. If we were to select all of these circles in the middle, if I was to go from right to left and draw a selection box. You can see I have all of the circles inside the box currently.

But if I release my mouse, you could see it selects all of the lines and everything that was touching the box. Now, if I do the same thing from left to right and click and drag a box, you can see right there.

I only have the circles completely inside the box. So when you go from left to right, anything that's only completely inside the box will be selected. So now when I release my mouse, you can see it only select the circles.

So as you can see, that's a very quick way. You can select objects inside of the selection box and you could see as well if I were to do that again, except if I went a little bit too far with the selection box.

Now I'm outside of the opposite side. And then if I release my mouse, you could see it selected all of these lines because they're inside of the selection box as well. So in order not to select those lines, you have to draw the box just shy of the end of those lines.

That way, they're not completely inside the box. And then I release right now, and I'll only select these circles that were completely inside. And also, keep in mind that grouping matters as well. So let's say if there was these objects here selected and grouped together, I'll just use the keyboard shortcut the letter G to group those.

Now those are all together in one group. Now, if I were to draw that selection box from left to right and then with all the circles inside the box, if I release, you can see it did not select those because the shapes that were connected to that group were not completely inside of the selection box.

So just keep that in mind as well. And then also you can hold your shift key and then draw another selection box. So let's say one of these circles up here, I can draw another selection box around those.

And while holding the shift key, I can select those as well. So as you can see, the selection box is a very powerful tool to be able to select objects really quickly. But it does matter the direction you move the box.

So you could definitely play around with that and try it out for yourself. And if you have any questions on any of that, just let me know.