The ancient Filter command can still be — in some situations — much quicker than its grandchild the Quick Select command, and it can even perform selection operations that can’t be done otherwise.
For example, if you have to deal with drawings with poorly organized content (created by people other than you, of course!), both selection methods can be time savers. But for the purpose of this tip, I’m going to highlight some features that make the Filter command more powerful.
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The Filter command can select all the different types of dimensions (rotated, aligned, angular, etc.) in one hit, while the Quick Select command can only append one type at a time.
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Same applies to text and mtext.
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The Filter command can act as a more tailored SelectSimilar — use the Add Selected Object option to select an object(s) from the drawing, and the Filter command will display a list of all its properties. Then you can go through the list and delete the inapplicable properties such as coordinates.
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If you perform some complicated selection operations frequently, you can save them to the Filter List.
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You can do even more if you familiarize yourself with the logical operators AND, OR, NOT,and XOR.
Notes from Cadalyst tip reviewer R.K. McSwain: The Filter command (not to be confused with the Filters command) is an old command that goes way back. It's like QSelect on steroids. As Tawfik mentions, you can perform much more complex object property filtering with this command. Tawfik lists five ways, and there are many more. For example, in one step with the Filter command, you can find all circles that are green with a radius of less than 1.5 units, and whose linetype = Hidden. |