CADD Technician Rebekah Wolf sends us an AutoCAD 2010 trick that will allow you to select multiple grips at once when grip-editing a polyline.

"I usually hold down the Shift key to select multiple grips on a polyline, but I recently discovered that holding the Ctrl key and clicking on a desired line or arc segment(s) will allow the user to select all grips associated with the polyline segment at once.

"I started using AutoCAD 2012 last week, and I do not get the same results that I had with AutoCAD 2010. In 2010, starting with an unselected polyline, I would move my cursor over the segment(s) I wanted to select, press Ctrl, and click the left mouse button. The grips associated with that segment would be selected and ready to move.

"In 2012, I get similar results except the grips associated with the segment are not in the 'selected' mode – I still have to hover and select them. Also, in 2012, selecting a grip and pressing Ctrl will cycle between Stretch, Add a vertex, and Remove a vertex (similar to unassociated hatches)."

Notes from Cadalyst Tip Patrol: Grip-editing polylines (or any object) is a great way to make quick changes in AutoCAD. Select the object (without any commands activated). The boxes at the object’s vertices are the grips; select one and you can alter the object.

AutoCAD 2011 changed the way many grips worked: It added many more options to polylines. AutoCAD 2012 added similar options to most objects in AutoCAD. The Ctrl trick only works in AutoCAD versions prior to release 2011. Hold down the Shift key and select more than one grip. Now when you edit the grips, these selected grips will retain their geometric relationships.