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Selecting things

Every tool that needs you to point at something gathers it the same way: through an element picker in the context pane. Learn it once and every tool works the way you expect.

Pickers​

A picker is the combo-box-shaped input beside a tool's label — Bodies, Profile, Cutters, Axis. Each one takes a particular sort of thing and a particular number of them. Empty, it shows what it's after: a count and the icons of the kinds it accepts. Filled, it counts what it holds by kind — 2 ⟨line⟩ · 1 ⟨body⟩. Click it to list what's in it, drop any row with its ✕, or Clear all.

A single-pick input reads 0/1, and 1/1 once it's filled.

One picker is armed at a time​

The armed picker wears a bright ring, and it's the one your next click feeds — in the viewport or the Elements pane. Tools step through their pickers for you: pick the bodies to move, and the tool arms the source point; pick that, and it arms the target. Click any picker to arm it yourself.

A picker only takes what it's for. The Slice tool's Cutters wants planes and flat faces, so a body under the cursor reads as its flat cap rather than as the whole solid. A Revolve axis takes straight references only, so a circle is never offered as one. What the armed picker turns down goes to the tool's first picker, so its main set stays reachable — pick a path for a Repeat and you can still add more bodies to repeat.

Picking​

Click in the 3D viewport, or on a row in the Elements pane — either its name or its type icon. Both feed the armed picker.

Hovering shows what a click would take — everything the armed picker accepts lights up, and nothing it doesn't. Clicking a picked thing again removes it. Shift+click adds to a plain selection.

Where a picker wants edges and you click a face, you get all of that face's edges — so chamfering the whole top of a box is one click, not four. The face lights up edge by edge on hover, so you can see it coming.

Edges come as whole runs​

An edge picks together with every edge that runs smoothly out of it. A straight line that breaks into a tangent curve and leaves again as a tangent line is one thing to click, not three. The run stops at corners and wherever three edges meet. Hover shows the whole run before you commit to it.

Hold Control to take just the edge under the cursor.

When several things overlap under the cursor, press Space for the Selection Exploder. It fans out the things the armed picker can take, so a tool after bodies offers one handle per body and a tool after faces offers faces.

What a picker holds is highlighted​

Everything in a picker is styled as selected — in the viewport and in the Elements pane, so both agree about what you've gathered. Things a tool will consume read red instead: a Combine cut's second side, a Revolve's cut bodies.

Switching tools keeps your picks​

Gather three bodies with Combine, decide you meant Move, and the bodies come with you. The new tool's first picker takes whatever it accepts and leaves the rest, so switching to a tool that wants faces starts empty rather than carrying bodies it can't use.

See also​