About Component Selection Modes and Sets

Learn how to easily select multiple features or components for a bulk editing operation.

What's New: 2021

Selection Modes

While working with models, you select features for editing, faces for creating new sketches, or edges for creating new features, such as chamfers and fillets. Inventor provides selection modes, for example: Select Bodies, Select Features, Select Faces, and Select Sketches. Access these commands on the Quick Access Toolbar.

Selection Sets

When working with assemblies in Inventor, it is common to select a set of components during modeling operations to:

• Turn off visibility.
• Create patterns or mirrors.
• Create drawing views.
• Verify which components are under constrained.

You can select sets of components by size, location, relation to other components, or other criteria. Then you can invert the selected order, or revert to the previous selection set. You can turn off visibility of all components that are not selected.

Bounding Box for Component

The bounding box defines the outermost extremities of a selected component.

In the Component Size and Component Offset selection methods, the bounding box calculates and displays the maximum distance that the components cover. In the offset method, you can drag the box face to increase or decrease its "range." In the size method, you enter a value to increase or decrease the selectable "range." In the sphere method, the radius of the sphere determines the selection radius.

You can use a percentage instead of absolute size, with 100% matching the size of the largest component.

Components Missing from Selection Set

There can be several reasons why components are not in the selection set:

• Using the Constrained To method, missing components are not constrained to the selection set. It is a good way to identify constraint relationships between components.
• Using the Component Size method, the missing components do not fit within the specified size range. Enter a different size or change the At Least or At Most setting to select components relatively larger or smaller than the specified size.
• Using the Component Offset or Component Sphere methods, the bounding box or sphere was too large or too small to select the expected components. Enter a different size or drag the box or sphere to resize. Partially included components are not always represented in the selection set.

If you used Isolate to turn off visibility of components that are not selected, you can use Undo Isolate. Undo Isolate returns all components to their visibility states before you used Isolate. It does not undo any commands that you activate after you use Isolate.

Tips for Creating Selection Sets

• Use the Select command to improve assembly performance.
• Set the selection priority to the desired object type to include in the selection set.
• Activate Visible Filter to restrict the commands to select only from visible components.
• Use Constrained To for highlighting all components constrained to a specific preselected item. Constrained To identifies constraint relationships between components.
• Use Component Size to highlight all components that are either larger or smaller than the preselection or a value you enter manually. The components that are not highlighted do not fit within the specific size criteria.
• Use Component Offset or Sphere Offset to select components within the bounding box or sphere. You can either enter a value for the size of the bounding box or pick the preselection set from the graphic area for the bounding box. You can enter a new value or drag the box or sphere to enlarge the area. Select the Include Partially Contained option to include components which cross outside the bounding area.
• Use Select by Plane to highlight all components on one side of a plane. You can flip the direction to view components from either side of the plane.
• Use External Components to select components that are visible externally. The percentage slider adjusts the precision of the command. The Internal Components command works the same way, but returns the inverse selection set.
• Use All in Camera to highlight the components that are in the current view space. The percentage slider adjusts the precision of the command.
• Use Visibility to turn off the visibility of groups of components. It speeds up subsequent loading of assemblies or drawing view creation.