Selection

Tutorials| 12 January 2014 | Dusan Rodina - softwareideas.net
If you want choose element, you want to work with, you have to select them. You can select one or more elements using Selection tool.

Selection tool is the first tool in the Common group of the toolbox. After using any other tool, which is not locked, the selection tool is activated.

If you want to select some elements and the selection tool is not active, click on its button on toolbox (1). Then press and hold the left mouse button over the free space of diagram, where you want to start your selection. Move cursor (3) and the blue semi-transparent rectangle representing selection area will appear. During defining the selection, you can see the coordinates of selected area in the status bar (4). When there is a part of each element within selection bounds, you can release the mouse button.

Selection

After releasing the button, elements will be selected. Software Ideas Modeler uses partial containment selection by default. Selected elements have blue outline (1). You can see the number of selected elements in status bar (2).

Selection Result

Full containment selection

If you want select only element which are entirely within selection bounds, you have to press Alt during selection. In this mode, you do not need to start selection in free space. So it is also useful, when you want to select elements within container element (e.g. package).

Full Containment Selection

There is also a setting which allows to switch usage of full and partial containment selection. Right click on Selection tool, click on Selection Settings and choose Full Containment.

Selection Settings

Comparison of partial containment and full containment selection

Partial vs Full Containment

Selection using Smart Keys feature

If you press F3 key, active tool switch to Selection and elements on the active diagram will be marked with big number (0-9). If you press a numeric key (0-9), the element marked with this number will be selected.

Selection Smart Keys

Selection modifications

If you want to cancel selection, click on free space in the diagram. If you want to add new elements to selection, press CTRL or SHIFT and click on element, which is not included in the selection. If you click on element included in selection with presses CTRL or SHIFT, this element will be removed from the selection. You can also hold CTRL or SHIFT and select a new area within the diagram. Elements which are within this area and not in the current selection will be selected and elements which are within selection area and are already selected, will be removed from selection.

Selection in Project tree

Selected elements are also highlighted in the project tree.

Selection Project Tree

Selection commands

Menu Edit offers three commands, which allows to modify the current selection:

  • Select All (default key shortcut: CTRL+A)
    • selects all elements in the active diagram
  • Select All of Same Type (default key shortcut: CTRL+T)
    • select all elements of the same type as active element. E. g. if an active element is a class, then all classes in the active diagram will be selected.
  • Invert Selection
    • deselect all selected elements and select all other elements in the active diagram

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