Fence Selection

A group of items can be selected by using a fence selection. There are two fence selection options ‑ Wholly Within and Wholly And Partially Within.

Wholly Within selects items that are entirely contained inside the rectangular boundary of a fence selection.

Wholly And Partially Within selects both items that are entirely contained inside the rectangular boundary of a fence selection, and items that cross the boundary.

Fence selection can be carried out with either the right or left mouse button. The ‘Within’ setting is achieved from a right mouse button fence select ‑ see below.

Fence select using the left mouse button

Drag a rectangle surrounding the items to be selected by pressing the left mouse button down at one corner of the rectangle, and drag the mouse pointer to the opposite corner. The selection takes place when the mouse button is released.

The items selected depend on the current ‘Within’ setting ‑ see Fence Select using the right mouse button below.

The illustrations below show the effects of each selection.

selection rectangle

if Wholly Within is selected

if Wholly And Partially Within is selected

Pressing the Esc key during the drag aborts the selection.

Fence Select using the Right Mouse Button

Drag a rectangle surrounding the items to be selected by pressing the right mouse button down at one corner of the rectangle, and drag the mouse pointer to the opposite corner. The menu shown in the picture below appears when the mouse button is released.

The selection takes place when one of the options on the menu is selected.

Pressing the Esc key during the drag or prior to selecting from the menu aborts the selection. Clicking away from the selection or selecting Cancel on the menu also aborts the selection.

Adding to an existing Graphical Selection with a fence selection

Holding the Ctrl key down while performing a fence selection adds the selected items to the existing Graphical Selection.

Removing selected items from an existing Graphical Selection with a fence selection

Holding the key down while performing a fence selection removes the selected items from the existing Graphical Selection.