Custom Selection improvement

[Chris D]

Selecting a symbol by name using Custom Selection is very cumbersome. All you are offered is a massive long list of symbol names.

I'd like:

- Autocomplete of the symbol name in the name box

- Key jumping within the drop down list

[Chris D]

I'd also like to be able to Custom Select geometry by dimensions, such as select all circles of 600mm diameter.

It seems you can currently select by field value of intelligent objects, but not for basic objects such as rectangles, circles etc.

I'd like:

• Line by Length
  
• Circle by Radius
  
• Rectangle by Width or Height
  
• Regular Polygon by Number of Vertices
  
• Polygon by Area
  
• Any Object by Rotation
  

and so on.

I'd also like upper and lower bounding selection e.g. select all circles between 500mm and 700mm diameter.

[Christiaan]

I'd also like to be able to Custom Select geometry by dimensions, such as select all circles of 600mm diameter.

Yeah I've found myself wanting to do this kind of thing. There was something else similar that I wanted to do which I'll post when I remember it.

This tool is going to become really important. The faster and more powerful it is the better.

[Chris D]

This tool is going to become really important. The faster and more powerful it is the better.

Going forward it seems the higher level objects are well covered, so in the progression towards BIM the Custom Selection tool will actually be very useful.

This is almost a case of going back and adding the missing functionality to low level objects.

[Chris D]

For an example I received some complicated electrical layout DWG files today that were badly classed. I needed to select only the lighting fittings which were just drawn as circles of a certain diameter....but of course I had to do it manually for each and every floor level. This isn't even smart CAD let alone smart BIM.

You could argue that the electrical engineer was at fault, but as usual I need the information today, so complaining about their drawing technique doesn't help me...what I need is powerful software to help me.

[Chris D]

I also can't understand why the Custom Selection tool requires two modal dialog boxes instead of one. It would be so much quicker with one...

Current dialogs:

Preferred single dialog:

[Christiaan]

Great point. It's because they don't employ UX designers at NV, only engineers.

[Chris D]

And when I've picked the normal Select tool, why can't the "power select" tools be available on the tool mode bar...like this:

[Christiaan]

I'm sure it can.

[Benson Shaw]

+1

I am all for getting rid of dialog boxes where ever possible. Esp the nested ones. Just let me see the choices in one box.

-B