AutoCAD: Object Smart Selection QSELECT vs FILTER

There are two commands to select objects on a smart way. Each of them has different features.
Català - Castellano
When we have a complicated drawing and need to select some of the objects in it we have two commands that will help us do the selection process easier:

• QSELECT: Also accessible on the upper right corner of the properties Tab, this command is probably the best known to select only certain objects in the drawing. Once the command is active, its dialog box looks like the image on the right (click the image for a larger version of it). You can select objects by object type, color, layer, plot style, etc. making it quite simple to select several objects at once. You can choose to select all the objects in the drawing that comply with the properties you assign in this dialog box or just those of the current selection. See a quick example of what QSELECT can do. The images below, show a bunch of lines and arcs drawn on different layers. Using QSELCT we selected on the second image only the objects on the layer named "2" that has Yellow as the layer color. On the third image we used QSELECT to select only the Arcs regardless of their layer. You can see how useful this can turn to be.

• FILTER: The command FILTER is not as widely known as QSELECT, probably because QSELECT has the icon on the properties tab and this one doesn't, and because since the introduction of QSELECT in version 2000, this command seems to be left with no updates. It is though a very useful complement, specially because it allows us to store selection filters. This will turn to be extremely useful in complicated drawings. See below the interface of the FILTER dialog box, and how we filter the objects to only select those Arcs that are on Layer 2 (again click the images if you want to see an enlarged version)
  

Both commands are very important to speed up the selection of multiple objects. QSELECT has a more intuitive interface, but the capacity of saving selection filters with FILTER makes it also very useful.


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