Wishes
Post your wishes about Graphisoft products: Archicad, BIMx, BIMcloud, and DDScad.

More information in the Navigator Project Map

Anonymous
Not applicable
One of the things that is missing is a listing of the various elements placed on a floor underneath the floor plan for each floor in the Navigator Panel. Many times selecting an item is difficult or sometimes impossible when in the floor plan view as most items are selected at their edges and not at the body of the item. As an example, the floor slab is at the bottom and there could many items directly above it but if you don't position the cursor at just the right spot tabbing through the list might not show the slab. My suggestion is to either allow item selection from within the body of the item or provide a listing of each item in the Navigator panel. These selection issues hold true in the 3D view as well. Try selecting a slab in the 3D view by hovering the cursor over the center of it, won't happen.

regards
10 REPLIES 10
Anonymous
Not applicable
Many times selecting an item is difficult or sometimes impossible when in the floor plan view as most items are selected at their edges and not at the body of the item.
I bet you don't have 'quick selection' turned on! Its the little magnet symbol in the info bar. This allows you to select anything by hovering over the body. Hold down shift as well for faster highlighting to see what you are selecting, and to select/deselect multiple items.
Karl Ottenstein
Moderator
DrWho,

Your wish is titled " More information in the Navigator Project Map" - but seems to have nothing whatsoever to do with the Navigator and everything to do with selection methods.

I would change the subject of your wish to match your post (selection) - except that I believe that Peter addressed your complaint completely? With magnetic selection you can select your slab anywhere, and for any selection, when there are multiple items on top of each other, pressing the Tab key repeatedly cycles you through them.

Let us know if that addresses your need and if the subject should be changed and the poll deleted... or if not, what your wish is? 🙂

Karl
One of the forum moderators
AC 27 USA and earlier   •   macOS Ventura 13.6.6, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB
Anonymous
Not applicable
Thanks Peter. I turned it on and selection is easier. When in the floor plan view (which is where my concern was) if you have a situation where there are many object one on top of the other (eg. slab, knee wall, curtain window and then a beam) the "quick selection" feature only indicates the top item and indicates that you can scroll through by hitting the tab key. The issue that I have is that when selecting an element that is not the top item any sudden/accidental movement of the mouse can sometimes change the item being highlighted. In other words if your hand twitches you have to select the item again. Now if the items were listed in the Navigator Project Map under the Story marker/label selecting an object becomes permanent until something else is selected regardless of mouse motion. In my design I had to select many objects that were not at the top level of the items for copy. This required that I select the first item and then while holding the SHIFT key down I had to move the mouse and then while holding the shift key down start tapping the TAB key until the item is highlighted and then left clicking to select the item while hoping that the clicking action of the mouse does not allow it to move. If the items were in the Navigator Project Map all I would need to do is select the first object from the map and then while holding the CTRL key (windows) select all of the other items desired. And then right clicking over any of the selected items in the Navigator Project map would bring up the option window with all the options (MOVE, Settings, etc.) that can be done. That's my thoughts.

Regards.
Barry Kelly
Moderator
If you need a particular element then activate that tool first before you press the SHIFT key and try to select.
It will limit you to only those type of elements.

i.e. You have slabs, walls, roofs and fills all overlapping.
You want to select the slab.
With the arrow tool selected you could hold SHIFT and TAB through all the elements until the slab you want is highlighted.
But if you activate the slab tool then SHIFT you will only have to TAB through the slabs if there is more than one.
All other elements will be ignored.

This works if you are selecting a common edge or a surface with the quick-select magnet (space bar is the shortcut key to activate or deactivate the quick-select).
If you have the slab too selected you can still select a wall easily so long as you click on an edge or node of the wall that is not common with the slab.

Then of course you can throw in the CTRL key to ad or subtract to your selection set.

So activate tool, SHIFT + SPACE while pressing TAB then + CTRL to add to your selection set.
Your fingers will get a good workout.

Barry.
One of the forum moderators.
Versions 6.5 to 27
Dell XPS- i7-6700 @ 3.4Ghz, 16GB ram, GeForce GTX 960 (2GB), Windows 10
Lenovo Thinkpad - i7-1270P 2.20 GHz, 32GB RAM, Nvidia T550, Windows 11
David Maudlin
Virtuoso
DrWho:

For these types of selections, I recommend you look at the Find & Select palette. You can specify criteria for selection, and use the Marquee Tool to designate the area. It also allows saving the criteria if a particular selection is being made repeatedly.

You should add a Signature to your Profile (click the Profile button near the top of this page) with your ArchiCAD version and operating system (see mine for an example) for more accurate help in this forum.

David
David Maudlin / Architect
www.davidmaudlin.com
Digital Architecture
AC27 USA • iMac 27" 4.0GHz Quad-core i7 OSX11 | 24 gb ram • MacBook Pro M3 Pro | 36 gb ram OSX14
Anonymous
Not applicable
Barry thanks for the information but as you stated at the very end, good workout for the fingers which is exactly what I am trying avoid/eliminate.

Dave as for info I did go read about the "Find and Select" function but again it seemed to take a lot of mouse clicks for selecting objects on one floor and it didn't seem to allow for differentiation between entities of the same type (eg. window 48" wide and window 30" wide) and would select all the windows which might not be the desired result.

The basis of my wish is to make working as simple as possible. In my case I have MS which is now affecting my hands to a small degree. While using a mouse is easy using a keyboard isn't (hit the right key approx. 70% of time). It would be great if the keyboard could be eliminated altogether for me but that is not realistic but there could be options added to help reduce the dependency of using the keyboard and thus my desire to be able to select items just using a mouse.

Regards

PS: as you will notice I have added a signature
David Maudlin
Virtuoso
DrWho wrote:
PS: as you will notice I have added a signature
Thanks.
DrWho wrote:
Dave as for info I did go read about the "Find and Select" function but again it seemed to take a lot of mouse clicks for selecting objects on one floor and it didn't seem to allow for differentiation between entities of the same type (eg. window 48" wide and window 30" wide) and would select all the windows which might not be the desired result.
Actually, this is what Find & Select can do. For instance, if Element Type is Window, you can add another Criteria: Width = 2'-6", and only the Windows 2'-6" wide will be selected. This can be done in the 3D Window so all of these windows in the project can be selected and altered in one step.

David
David Maudlin / Architect
www.davidmaudlin.com
Digital Architecture
AC27 USA • iMac 27" 4.0GHz Quad-core i7 OSX11 | 24 gb ram • MacBook Pro M3 Pro | 36 gb ram OSX14
Anonymous
Not applicable
Thanks for the info Dave. I am curious, does the Find & Select function allow the user to specify only one floor as a search attribute? I didn't see that but I could have missed that. Secondly you show it working in the 3D viewer but does it work in the floor plan view? As I am sure you know that some times you don't want to change all of the specific size windows or doors, just 10% of them maybe.

Regards.
Barry Kelly
Moderator
Find & Select works just as well in plan or any other view.
The thing is you will only get to select from what you can see.
i.e. in plan it will be just that storey that you can see.

You can also use the marquee to define an area that allows you to select items inside or outside of the marquee.

Barry.
One of the forum moderators.
Versions 6.5 to 27
Dell XPS- i7-6700 @ 3.4Ghz, 16GB ram, GeForce GTX 960 (2GB), Windows 10
Lenovo Thinkpad - i7-1270P 2.20 GHz, 32GB RAM, Nvidia T550, Windows 11