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The Selection tool allows you to select objects like brushes, entire entities or bezier patches in your map and move, scale, rotate or shear them. Selecting objects is also needed if you want to use functions of CaWE that only work on a single object or a group of objects and therefore need a selection to decide on what object(s) the function is to be used.
Functions of CaWE that are related to a selected object are for example copy, cut and delete. These work only with one or more selected objects on which these actions are performed.
You can activate the Selection tool by clicking on the related icon marked in the left screen or by pressing the SHIFT+S
keyboard shortcut.
To select an object, click the object once. In the 3D view, click on any surface that is part of the object to select it. In the 2D view click either on an edge that is part of the object or on its center marker.
In the 3D view, the surface of the object will be changed in color and its edges are colored yellow to mark it as selected. In the 2D view only the of the selected object are colored red.
Another way to select objects is to drag a selection box in a 2D view window. This is done by left clicking into the window without clicking on the edge of an object and moving the mouse while holding the left mouse button down. Releasing the mouse button opens a selection box. You can now move and scale this selection box until it covers all objects you want to select. You can select these objects by pressing the RETURN
-key.
If you want to select more than one object, you can select object while pressing the CTRL
-key. This way you can choose as many object as you want and perform an action on all these objects simultaneously.
You can deselect all selected objects by pressing the ESC
-key, which clears the selection.
Now that one ore more objects have been selected you can perform actions on them.
In the 2D view a dashed rectangular box has been drawn around the selected object by the editor (this box is only visible if the object itself isn't rectangular) and the edges and vertices of this box have white squares attached to them. By moving the mouse over one of these squares and dragging this square by holding down the left mouse button you can resize the object in the direction of the square you clicked on.
If you click again on an already selected object white dots at the vertices of the box become visible. Moving the mouse over one of these dots and dragging this dot by holding down the left mouse button rotates the object smoothly. It is also possible to rotate the object in multiples of 15 degrees by pressing and holding down the SHIFT
-key while rotating an object.
A second click on an already selected object shows white squares at the edges of the box. By left clicking on a square and moving the mouse while holding the left mouse button down this edge can be moved in two directions along its own axis and in this way the object is deformed.
To delete a selected object just press the DEL
-key on your keyboard or choose Delete from the Edit menu.
There are a lot more things you can do with selected objects. These additional functions are explained in the documentations of the Edit menu, Map menu, View menu and Tools menu.
Once the Selection tool is activated, its option bar is visible above the view windows. This bar contains selection parameters and buttons for further functions related to selections.
SHIFT+S
:ENTER
:ESC
: DEL
: CTRL
:SHIFT
:Page up
:Page down
: