Appearance
Select things
The Select tool is V. Everything here needs it active.
Basics
| Click geometry | Select it |
| Shift + click | Add it, or remove it if already selected |
| Click empty space | Clear the selection |
| Ctrl/Cmd + A | Select everything drawn |
| Esc | Clear the selection |
Clicking the only selected item again clears the selection, which is a quick way to deselect without moving the mouse.
Drag box
Drag on empty space. Only geometry fully enclosed by the box is caught; anything crossing the boundary is left alone.
Hold Shift to add the boxed geometry to what is already selected.
One quirk: a second drag box does not arm directly off the back of the first. Click once in between.
The four modes
Keys 1 to 4, or the buttons at the top of the Selection section. They narrow what a click or a drag box may pick, in both the sketch and model views.
| Mode | Key | Reach for it when |
|---|---|---|
| All | 1 | Almost always. The default |
| Vertex | 2 | A point is buried under lines |
| Edge | 3 | A point keeps winning over the line you want |
| Face | 4 | You want a whole profile, or a face of the solid |
Face mode in the sketch is the useful one people miss: clicking empty space inside a closed profile selects every entity bounding it. That is the fastest way to grab a whole loop.
Edge mode in the sketch keeps a line grabbable even when a point sits on top of it, which in All mode would win.
In the model view the modes decide whether a click picks a face, an edge, or a corner. See the model view.
Selecting for a constraint
Constraints care about the exact selection. Two points and nothing else offers Coincident and Distance; two points plus a line offers Symmetric instead.
If an expected button is missing from the Selection section, count what is selected. One thing too many is the usual cause. The section lists exactly what it thinks you have.
What selection also does
Selecting geometry tints every row in the docket that mentions it. That is the fastest way to answer "why will this point not move".
Selecting a single point also brings up editable X and Y fields.