Selection shortcuts in Alias

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The selection tools in Alias are here on the Pick palette.

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And the two key tools are Pick Object and Pick Nothing.

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And we use these so often that they're also on

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the marking menus that pop up at the cursor position

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when I use Shift + Ctrl with the left mouse button.

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And these can be very quick to use once you learn the north-south positions.

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So let's use Pick Object by releasing the mouse.

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And up here, the prompt line says click on some geometry.

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So I can click on an edge,

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in the middle of a surface, or I can use a box-select,

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and then I just click again if I need to unpick.

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So the selected items are highlighted in the scene.

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And then over here on the Control Panel,

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there's also a tally of what I've got selected.

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I can use the Pick Nothing tool to deselect everything

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and that's a momentary tool.

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So you'll notice up here that we're staying in Pick Object,

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that's a continuous tool.

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So I can now just keep selecting.

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And this time if I do a click-release on this boundary,

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then the pick chooser list pops up

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and I can check which one I want and just pick it from the list.

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And if I come and click over here where there are four items

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and you'll see the one I've already selected has the blue check mark,

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so I can then just add another one to the selection.

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Another useful tool is Pick Component

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and that can be used to pick elements in a group,

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but it can also be set up as a filter.

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So if I have a look at Pick Curves on the marking menu,

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you can see that it's just the Pick Component tool set to curves only.

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So if I now drag-select across here, I've only picked these four curves.

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And it's the same with Pick Surface, it just selects the four surfaces instead.

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Another important tool is Pick Control Vertex

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and that will appear on your marking menu as Pick CV or Pick Vertex.

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And I can just click on a point

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or do a small drag-select.

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But the important thing about CVs is that

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I can only select them if they're displayed.

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So on this wheel,

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I can't work with CVs until I go over to

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the Control Panel here and turn on the CV display.

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And then now I can do Pick Nothing

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and then use the Pick

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CV tool to select the CVs I want to sculpt with.