Quick select, select similar and purge

These commands help you pick the right objects and tidy the drawing.

Select all

Press Ctrl+A, choose Edit > Select all, or type ALL. Every object in the current space is selected, whatever its layer. Use QSELECT when you want only some of them.

Quick Select - QSELECT

Choose Edit > Quick Select... or type QSELECT. The Quick Select dialog builds a filter:

1. Apply to - the entire drawing, or the current selection (offered only when something is selected).
2. Object type - Multiple for any type, or one of the types present.
3. Properties - the property to test, such as Layer or Colour. The list depends on the type.
4. Operator - = Equals, <> Not equal, > Greater than, < Less than or * Wildcard match. Only operators that make sense for the property are offered.
5. Value - picked from the values in the drawing, or typed for a wildcard.

Under How to apply, choose Include in new selection set to select the matches, or Exclude from new selection set to select everything else. Tick Append to current selection set to add to what is already selected. The status line reports how many objects were selected.

Select similar - SELECTSIMILAR

Select one or more objects and run SELECTSIMILAR (or choose it from the Edit menu). Every object that matches them is selected. If nothing is selected yet, select objects and press Enter.

Purge - PURGE (PU)

PURGE removes unused items from the drawing to keep it small. Choose Format > Purge... or type PU. The Purge dialog lists, with counts, the unused:

• Blocks
• Layers
• Linetypes
• Text styles
• Dimension styles

Untick anything you want to keep, then press Purge checked, or Purge all for everything listed. Purge nested items also removes items that only become unused once others are gone. Tick Purge zero-length geometry and empty text objects to delete degenerate objects as well; the count is shown.

The current layer, layer 0 and the current linetype are never purged. The whole purge is one undo step, so U restores everything.

See also Properties panel and Command reference.