Michael’s Corner

Michael's Corner is a monthly publication written by Michael E. Beall, Autodesk Authorized Author and peripatetic AutoCAD trainer. Michael travels all over the USA, bringing his fantastic experience and great understanding of AutoCAD to his clients. Michael's Corner brings together many of the tips, tricks and methods developed during these training sessions for the benefit of all users.

Michael's Corner provides something for every AutoCAD user. Every month, a number of articles cover a wide range of topics, suitable for users at all levels, including "The Basics" for those just starting out. Essentially, the aim of Michael's Corner is to help all AutoCAD users work smarter and faster.

This month…

From the Vault

Originally published August 2012

SELECTSIMILAR on the Command Line

Covered in the Basics, May 2011 (with a nice video tutorial, thank you, David!), the Select Similar feature is a powerful selection tool, but not a lot of folks know there are options. There's no arrow from the shortcut menu or anything that would indicate that there even ARE any. (And that sounds like a great idea for next month's Power Tool; adding a flyout to the shortcut menu item).

For example, if all the furniture of your drawing on the same layer, such as A-FURN, when you select a chair, then use Select Similar… all the furniture is selected because the default setting for that feature is Layer.

Solution

Type the command — SELECTSIMILAR — then enter SE for the SEttings option and you see this dialog box. They're all pretty straightforward, and here's the Help menu's explanation of the last two…

Object style
Considers objects with matching styles (such as text styles, dimension styles, and table styles) to be similar.

Name
Considers referenced objects (such as blocks, xrefs, and images) with matching names to be similar.

Bottom Line

In the furniture example, above, the solution would be to check the box for Name, and you would get a selection as you see here.

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