Hey guys, I'm Aaron. In this series SketchUp Square One, we are
going to take a look at the basics of SketchUp,
back to the very basics, like how a tool works.
In this particular one, we are going to go all the way back to Select.
So, let's take a look at how the Select tool works, what it is, and why you might
want to use it.
Right now, I am in Select. I know that for a couple of different ways.
One is my cursor is just the regular cursor arrow; that's a dead giveaway that
I'm in Select. Another thing is if I look down at the
bottom here and see that on my command bar it says Select Objects.
Select Objects is what it tells you to do when you're in Select.
Finally, up at the top of the toolbar, I can see that the Select command
is currently highlighted. The top left command of the default toolbar
is Select. It's also in the large tool set; so, if I was to go to View,
Tool Palettes or Toolbars on Windows and click Large Tool Set,
I'll see the very first button on there is the Select command.
Select is pretty easy to get to. In fact, , it has got the biggest shortcut key on the
whole keyboard. If you ever end up in a different
command and want to get back to Select, you can just tap
the spacebar. Spacebar is the shortcut key
to go back to Select. All right, so now we know how to get into it and when we're
into it, let's see how to use it. To Select an
item, move the cursor over it and click the left mouse button. Laura is
now selected. That's pretty easy. Let's look at maybe
how we could use Select to highlight some other
SketchUp items. Oh look what I happen to have here! So
over here, I have an edge, a face and...
well, it's a box. But it's a collection of faces and edges. We'll just refer to
it as a box. So, if I want to select an edge, all I
have to do is move the tip of the mouse. It
is the tip of the mouse, not the back, not the middle. It's the very tip of that
arrow over or near an edge and click. It will
highlight that edge. If I move over a face like this and
click, it will highlight the face. If I move on to a face on my box and
click, it will highlight that face also. I can also move over the edges that
make up this face and pick those as well. Same goes for my
box. I can actually pick any of these edges
also. If I want to pick this face and all the
edges that create it, so I want to get everything selected here,
I can double click a face. Double clicking a face
highlights the face and all the edges that define it.
Same goes on my box, if I click right here, double click,
I get all the edges. If I double click on an edge, it highlights
the edge and any faces connected to it so the
only face connected down here is this face to this edge. If I
double click on this edge, it selects that edge and the face above
and below it. Notice the side edges don't get selected because they're not
directly connected to this edge. And finally,
if I triple-click on geometry, it's going to select
all connected geometries. That means my whole box gets highlighted
for something like a single face a double click
versus a triple-click won't make any difference. All connected geometry to one
face is the same as double selecting on a face
and getting the edges that define it. All right, so that's nice but there's
actually modifier keys you can use with Select also.
If I want to add or remove from my selection,
I can hold down the Shift key. You do have to hold it down. It's not a toggle; I
can't just tap it once I do it to hold it down but
while I'm holding down Shift, I can add to this selection.
It does have little plus and minus next to it which means if I click on
something that's already highlighted, it will unselect.
Alternatively, if I hold the Option key on Mac
or Control key on Windows, I get just the plus.
That means I'm just adding. If I pick something that's already added,
it's not going to deselect it. If I hold them down together,
Option and Shift or Control and Shift, I get the minus select.
This means I can only turn off previously selected items.
In addition to individual clicks to Select,
you can click and drag to open a Select window.
There's two ways to do this. One is to drag from the left side
to the right side. Left to right means only things that are completely within
the window will be selected. So when I release here,
even though the edge of the window is lapping onto the box,
nothing no edge or face is fully within the window so when I release it,
only the pieces on the ground get selected. Alternatively,
if I go from the right side to the left side,
anything that dashed line crosses gets selected.
So that means the portion of the box is going to get highlighted when I release
my mouse.
The cool thing is that these commands can be used together;
so, if I wanted to, if I wanted to get this turned off but keep selected
right here, I could hold down Shift
and Option or Control to get the minus Select;
drag a box from right to left; and, release it
to turn off any geometry in the box and keep
my surface and my edge selected. So that is a quick look at how
the Select tool works in SketchUp.
I hope you like that! If you're brand new to SketchUp, hopefully that gives you a
solid grasp on how Select can be used. If you've already
been using SketchUp for a little while, maybe you picked up something that you
glossed over when you taught yourself how to use
Select the first time. Either way, if you did like that, click
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