Stayin’ Alive with Selection Preview in AutoCAD: Tuesday Tips With Frank

[The AutoCAD Blog]

In the 1970s, disco music became a cultural and fashion phenomenon with clubs, disco balls, and John Travolta’s iconic dance moves in Saturday Night Fever. What does this have to do with AutoCAD you may ask? Well, have you ever dragged your mouse across a drawing, and the objects below it lit up like you’re in a disco? Rolling over text, hatches, tables, and groups may light up like it’s to a dance beat, too.

Perhaps you’re a bit like me, and while you can appreciate the visual stimulus, you’d rather just get to the point. Today, our feature is called Selection Preview, and, like many AutoCAD features, you can control how it works.

Selection Preview Settings

The first step, of course, is getting there. It starts with the Options dialog. Get there in your favorite manner – mine is to right-click anywhere in the drawing editor (with no objects selected) and select Options from the pop-up dialog.

Then, in the Options dialog, click on the Select tab as shown in the image above. Finally, you’ll want to focus on the Preview settings in the bottom right.

Now that you’re where you need to be, let’s see what some of our options are.

The first two are directly responsible for our rollover scenario, and one is part of the things I always change when I get an upgrade. We can immediately stop the disco lights when rolling over things with no command active. Uncheck the second entry. That alone will be a big change for you. Personally, I like to have only selection preview enabled when I have a command active.

You can also control what kinds of objects are lit up like a disco dance floor when they are previewed. Click on the Visual Effect Settings… button, and you’ll get the following dialog.

We want to focus our attention on the right side. This is one of the more unusual dialogs in AutoCAD, as you are selecting an object type to exclude, instead of one to include. Of course, those unchecked are included, but I think you get my meaning. By default, objects on locked layers and Xrefs are excluded from preview. If you’d prefer to see them previewed, uncheck them here. Back to our scenario, this is where you can tell AutoCAD not to preview Tables, Groups, Mtext, or Hatches.

Again, you’re excluding things here, so, for example, if you never want to see Hatches preview, whether you’re in a command or not, check it here. Click OK to save and exit, and do the same for the main Options dialog.

Moving Forward

One of my favorite non-disco bands of that era led a song with the lyrics “Don’t look now, but here come the 80’s.” Not exactly a good way to make a song timeless, but hey, at least I remember it 45 years later.

By that time, though, the disco age was coming to a close, culminating in a 1979 “Disco Demolition Night” event at a Chicago White Sox home double-header, which quickly devolved into a riot of fans burning disco records.

The good news for you is that you can keep AutoCAD from looking like a disco dance floor and more like a streamlined, fast CAD program. It’s just a matter of knowing where to go and what to adjust.

When you do, those polyester suits, gold chains, and slicked back hair will stay in the disco era where they belong.

More Tuesday Tips

Check out our whole Tuesday Tips series for ideas on how to make AutoCAD work for you. 

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