Remove Selection within a Feature

Cache_River_Mill

• Remove Selection within a Feature - When making a selection within a feature, there is not a quick way to start over. If you want to start over, you have to click each selection to remove it. This improvement would allow you to right click the selection box and remove all selections at once.
  

lougallo

@cache_river_millworks you can do this today by selecting the selection area and hitting the space bar like this:

michael_bromley

Nice learn something new every day!

brucebartlett

Good tip, I did not know this. Thanks @lougallo

Cache_River_Mill

Thank you Lou, good to know.

PeteYodis

Curious here... How many of you that did not know space-bar cleared, at some point tried to right click on the list in the selection area?

tim_hess427

@pete_yodis - I'm sure I have done this more than once

brucebartlett

Just now I was modifying a feature and started wildly clicking and then remembered the spacebar clear, so good.

@PeteYodis I am sure at some stage I had clicked the list with no success, shift-click here would be more intuitive but now I know about the spacebar clear, I like it, a tooltip when clicking/hovering over the list would help let users know about or remember the spacebar clear. 

romeograham

It took me a little while to learn it, but now the spacebar clear is a real productivity booster.
Since the spacebar is large, and easy to target with my left hand - I can hit it to clear the existing selections, even as my right hand is moving my mouse to start the new selection.

Because the selection list box is so small (and often can't be expanded)....it's often easier / faster to clear & reselect than it is to poke around in the list to try to find failing / missing selections.

I know there are IRs on that side of things...

owen_sparks

PeteYodis said:

Curious here... How many of you that did not know space-bar cleared, at some point tried to right click on the list in the selection area?

Yes, I did. But mostly I just looked in the top right hand corner of the selection field for a small red cross. I continue to look for it to this day even though I'm dimly aware of the space-bar clear.
Owen S.

billy2

Lou explained it about 5 years ago in the beginning. I can't remember if he told me personally or if it was a forum post. That's when I picked it up and have been using ever since.

I've been through the training classes and believe it's in there. 

Can't imagine living without it.

Broke the spacebar on my laptop because spacebar clears selection and had a new keyboard installed under warranty. I use the spacebar a lot. Butterfly keys are on their way out for this reason.

So few people read this forum, I'm really shocked that more don't.

tim_hess427

I know I've read the spacebar tip somewhere and have used it a couple of times. The problem is I rarely want to clear everything out. In most instances, I just want to select/remove whatever items are causing issues. Its only after I get frustrated with selecting individual items in the list that I then look try clearing out the whole list. 

I use the spacebar to clear my "active selections" a lot, but hardly think about it when I have a list of parts. In my mental model "list of things to apply this feature to" is not the same as "active selections". Also, when the list is visible, things highlighted on the model are "things that I've added to the list", which, in my head, is also not "active selections". 

Not sure if those thoughts help, but I think that's why I don't think about using the spacebar in this situation. 

michael_bromley

PeteYodis said:

Curious here... How many of you that did not know space-bar cleared, at some point tried to right click on the list in the selection area?

I've absolutely tried that,  I also tried reversing the selection with the "Create selection" menu.

NikNYC

If you just bang on the keyboard it will work but you won't know why and your browser sometimes closes.

owen_sparks

Ah yes, ALT-F4 is the shortcut to deselect now is it?

Owen S.

Cache_River_Mill

Owen, that works much better than using the space bar. (Alt + F4) de-selects it much faster.

bruce_williams

I can relate with the latest methods - really feels good to use them!

owen_sparks

It didn't even ask me if I wanted to save my changes....