Unable to select plug-in objects of active class.

[acrowe35]

I am trying to select all door objects in my drawing. All door plug-in objects are members of class "Doors". Doors is the active class and I have class options set to Show/Snap others. All door plug-in objects are on the same active design layer. When I try setting class options to Active Only, all my doors disappear.

[Jesse Cogswell]

Objects that are attached to Walls (such as Doors, Windows, etc) are technically "contained" within those Walls.  So if you hide your "Walls" class, the objects will be hidden as well, since their parent object is hidden.  There are special rules around selecting embedded objects, as well.  You can't select an embedded object if anything other than an embedded object is selected.  Likewise, if you select an embedded object, you can't select anything other than another embedded object.  Also, both the Wall and the embedded object must be able to be selected in order to select the embedded object.  So if your Door and Wall are in separate classes and you have your Class Options set to Show/Snap, you won't be able to select the Door at all.

 

To achieve what you are looking for, I would suggest using the Select Similar Tool.  It looks like a "magic wand" in the Basic tool palette.

 

 

Once selected, you can choose a wide variety of criteria.  In your case, you'll want to select Object Type, then click on a Door object.  All selectable Doors will be selected.  I usually build presets for criteria by Object Type, Class, and Symbol Name so I can choose what selection type I want from the menu bar.

 

 

And as a general rule, I almost always have my Class Options set to Show/Snap/Modify.  Since symbols and plug-in objects can contain multiple Classes, having anything else is an invitation to frustration of not being able to select the things I want to select.  The only time I change it is when I want to select "primitive" objects such as lines or text that I have in construction or guideline classes to delete them, otherwise it's Show/Snap/Modify all the way.

Edited March 4 by Jesse Cogswell