Increase / decrease selection

Hey all, I have a question about selecting polygons , edges . Is there an extension somewhere that lets me increase and decrease my selection with a keyboard shortcut? I am talking about something that is similar like in blender that lets me modify my selection with “Ctrl + " and " Ctrl -” which speeds up my workflow quiet a bit.

Or is this something impossible to do in sketchup, even with a possible extension?

Thanks.

In SketchUp [Ctrl] adds to your current selection. [Shift] adds to / subtracts from your current selection, depending on whether something was already part of the current selection or not.
There are plugins that help remembering last selection and other helpful features. Search the Extention Warehouse from within SketchUp.
p.s. ThomThom might have one in the Extention Warehouse.

Ah I see what you mean, but that isn’t really what I am looking for. For example when I select 1 face I’d like to increase the current selection by adding all surrounding faces or edges simultaneously. Or decrease.

There’s “only” the right click contect menu option Select > (for instance) Connected Faces in native SketchUp, once you have a single face selected.
You’ll need ThomThom’s Selection Tool plugin (or similar) to expand the selection options.
https://extensions.sketchup.com/nl/content/selection-toys

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Interesting idea!

Don’t think it would be dificult to implement it with code using the Ruby API.

There is a method that selects connected faces.

Currently on my phone but when I get back to the computer I’ll see if my assumptions are true.

Cheers!

Note: When I tried to use the connected faces method it didn’t work as I predicted…Instead of selecting neighbor faces only it selected everything which presented a problem! I did try to solve it in CODE below…

Hello again,

Code example for increasing selection from selected faces…

# Get selected faces...
model = Sketchup.active_model
selection = model.selection
faces = selection.grep(Sketchup::Face)

# Empty Arrays
edges = []
connected = []

# Get an array of edges that bound the selected faces...
faces.each { |face| edges << face.edges }

edges.flatten!

# Get all of the faces common to the edges...   
edges.each { |edge| connected << edge.faces }

connected.flatten! 

# Increase selection with connected faces... 
selection.add connected

# Increase selection with connected edges... 
connected.each { |face| edges << face.edges }

selection.add edges

Above is a rough idea (ugly code) of how to solve increasing selection, but not decreasing it. Maybe if I have the time later I’ll build a better app for this topic but if I do I’ll probably sell it to justify the time working on it. Anyhow, I hope this is useful for you!

https://s14.postimg.org/51uwncn5t/increase_selection.gif

Also, you can download a Ruby editor in the Extension Warehouse and copy-paste the code to make it work. I don’t claim any copyright so anyone can feel free to use it and modified it or even sell it I don’t care.

Cheers!

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Hello Everyone,

If I ever build this Extension with good user interface would you Buy it for something like $15?

  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

Before spending time on this I would like to know if people would find it valuable enough.

Cheers!

Hi sasha

Your might to find similar option in the QuadeFace tools, specifically the second and third buttons (second increases the selection, third decreases)

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If you add the following code snippet to the end of the code above…

#Add this code line to the end of the sample code posted above... 
selection.remove faces

We get…

Checkers!

https://s20.postimg.org/qt5d61ge5/checker_Selection.gif

I don’t know why but I got excited about this and wanted to share it.

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this sort of functionality exists in Modo, which as one of its USP’s are its selection functions, (and they are fantastic), increasing decreasing the selection, saving selection sets, edge loops (edges and faces) around geometry (as opposed to edge loops per face), boundary edges etc. I have occasionally thought that that sort of thing would be handy in SU whilst modelling but only occasionally. Modo works with subdiv surfaces and quads and is a different beast entirely to SU.

Hey all , thanks for the replies , what Rafael suggested is indeed what I was looking for

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Probably going to start developing an Extension of this concept brought by @Sacha very soon. I am personally interested in actually using this tool myself and plan to also create other outside the box selections like, for example, the ‘Checker Selection’ previously posted.

Since I am a solo developer who does this part-time… I will start creating the ‘Minimal Viable Product’ and slowly iterate to make it better. Hopefully, people on this forum will collaborate with ideas or point out bugs and stuff.

And, we need to come up with a cool name for this Plugin!

Cheers!

Finished creating this concept into a finished tool.

Visit the following thread to get more info…

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