AutoCAD® 2012 FOR DUMMIES®

Object Selection: Now You See It …

The many object-selection modes I describe in previous sections — and some I don't describe at all, such as the FILTER command (check out the online help system for more on that) — are useful as far as they go.

AutoCAD 2012 lets you control the visibility of individual objects. This may or may not sound like a big deal, but believe me, it is. Before AutoCAD 2011, the only way to control the display of objects was to turn off or freeze the layer on which they resided. If there were other objects on that layer that you did want to see … too bad! Three commands turn that limitation into ancient history:

• HIDEOBJECTS: Prompts you to select those objects you want to make temporarily disappear
• ISOLATEOBJECTS: Prompts you to select those objects you want to see while temporarily making everything else disappear
• UNISOLATEOBJECTS: Ends the hiding and isolating of objects

The primary method of invoking these commands is via the right-click menu. Using either command-first or selection-first editing (as described in the section “Commanding and Selecting,” earlier in this chapter), simply right-click and you see the Isolate item shown in Figure 10-7. A status bar icon — a light bulb at the lower-right corner of the display — is dimmed when objects are either hidden or isolated. Click this icon to open a menu that lets you turn off the hiding or isolating.

If you're worried about the possible implications of this (“Hmm… I was sure I added those center lines ...