Select polygon components

To perform many types of operations on a polygon mesh you must first select the related polygon components you want to modify.

The following table describes techniques for selecting the various types of polygon components.

To...	Do this
Select polygon vertices	Set the selection type to vertices: Right-click the polygon mesh and select Vertex from the pop-up menu. or If the polygon mesh or other component types are already selected you can change the selection type to vertices by pressing F9. Then select the dots that appear where the lines intersect on the polygon mesh.
Select polygon edges	Set the selection type to edges: Right-click the polygon mesh and select Edge from the pop-up menu. or If the polygon mesh or other component types are already selected you can change the selection type to vertices by pressing F10. Then select the lines on the polygon mesh.
Select polygon faces	Set the selection type to faces: Right-click a region of the polygon mesh and select Face from the pop-up menu. or If the polygon mesh or other component types are already selected you can change the selection type to vertices by pressing F11. Then select the dots in the center of the faces.
Select polygon vertices, edges and faces	Set the selection type to multi by doing one of the following: Right-click a region of the polygon mesh and select Multi from the pop-up menu. Then select components on the polygon mesh. Multi-component selection mode will select vertices, edges or faces based on whichever is closest to the mouse cursor.
Select UV texture coordinates for a polygon mesh	Set the selection type to UVs: Right-click a region of the polygon mesh and select UV from the pop-up menu. or If the polygon mesh or other component types are already selected you can change the selection type to vertices by pressing F12. Then select the dots that appear where the lines intersect on the polygon mesh.

While you can select UVs in the scene view, you must use the UV Editor (UV > UV Editor) if you want to view the layout of UVs for your polygon mesh as well as perform other UV editing operations.

You can change an existing selection of polygon components to another component type. For example, if you have polygon faces currently selected, you can change the selection so the vertices associated with those faces get selected instead. For more information see Change one type of selection to another.

When you choose a polygon action, Maya automatically converts the selection to the component type expected by polygon action in most cases. If Maya converts from vertices to edges or faces, or edges to faces, the converted selection contains every component that touches the original selection. For example, if you select an edge and try to delete vertices, Maya automatically selects the two end-vertices of the edge and deletes them. However, if you select those two end-vertices and try to delete edges, Maya selects all edges that touch either of the two vertices and deletes them.