Selecting Cells, Points and Blocks

Options for selecting cells, points and blocks from a dataset are available through the Edit menu, or directly from the Selection Controls toolbar.

To select data, click on the appropriate Select option in the toolbar, and then drag the mouse in the render view to create a box around the data to capture. The Select On options will highlight data only on the visible surface of the datasets within the selection area, whereas the Select Through options will highlight all of the data within the selection area. The Select Block option is designed for use with multiblock datasets, and will select the blocks of data that are outlined. If multiple render windows are open, selecting cells, points or blocks will highlight the data in all render windows displaying that dataset.

Note: Two hot keys exist to select data. Use the S key to Select Cells On, and the B key for Select Block (use just the keys on the keyboard, not combined with the Shift key).

Once an area is selected, the mouse defaults back to the Interact option so the camera controls are once again active, and the data points can be changed or extracted to create a new object using only the new set of data. To extract the data, use the extraction filters in the Filter menu (such as Extract Selection), and click on Copy Active Selection before applying the filter in the Object Inspector.

To de-select the cells, points or blocks, click on any select option and then click anywhere in the render window.

To visualize the point about selecting data only on visible surfaces, you can create a Box in the render window, and then rotate the box so that two surfaces are visible, while the third surface is pointed away from the camera. Choose the Select Points On option and drag a box around the corner shared by the three surfaces. The point will highlight in pink. If you now view that point in the spreadsheet view (see below), you will notice that two rows are highlighted, one for each of the surfaces visible to the camera. If you change the selection to Select Points Through and highlight the same point, the spreadsheet view will highlight three rows, one for each of the three planes.br>

Using the Selection Inspector

With the top section you can actually change where the selection is coming from. The Current Object drop-down allows you to select the new object you want to create a selection on. Clicking on the Create Selection button clears the Selection Inspector Index and changes the Selected Object to the new object.

The Active Selection section contains general information and controls for the active selection.

• The pipeline object to which the selected data belongs is identified next to Selected Object. If two or more datasets are overlapping, drawing a selection window that covers multiple objects will still only select points or cells from the dataset identified in the Selected Object field. To select points or cells from multiple objects their geometries need to be connected using the Append Geometry filter.
• The Selection Type allows you to choose what type of selection is active. For instance, IDs refers to particular cells or points that are selected from the surface in a 3D view or a row in a spreadsheet view. If cells or points are selected through a dataset, the type defaults to Frustum, indicating that the selection is a region in space instead of IDs.
• The Field Type drop-down specifies if cells or points are selected.
• Two check-boxes are also present, one to select cells that include the points that are selected, and the other to completely invert the selection.

The next area of the Selection Inspector contains controls specific to the type of selection.

• If the selection type is IDs, a list of the selected cells or points is visible. These identifiers are unique for a particular point or cell in the data. The buttons underneath the list can be used to add a new value or range, to delete a single data selection or to delete all selections from the list.
• If the selection type is Frustum, this portion of the window only shows a check-box control that makes the boundaries of the frustum visible in the 3D view.
• For the Locations type, a list of locations showing the X, Y and Z values is displayed, and the buttons at the bottom can be used to add new values or ranges, or to delete one or all locations. An extra check-box is also available, and is used to show location widgets, which adds small axes at each of the locations.
• When a Thresholds type is chosen, a Scalars drop-down appears, and thresholds can be added to the list. The only buttons available for the threshold type are the Delete and Delete All options.
• For the Blocks type, a tree structure of all blocks is visible, with check-boxes to choose which blocks/sets should be selected.
• The GlobalIDs type shows a list of the unique identifiers for the selected cells or points. New values or ranges can be added, or one or all entries can be deleted. GlobalIDs are only available for datasets where specifically designated cell and point data arrays were created for that purpose.

The Display Style section is found at the bottom of the Selection Inspector. There are three tabs to control the Selection, Cell Labels and Point Labels.

• The Selection tab allows you to choose the Color, Opacity and Line Width used to identify the selection in the 3D view.
• The Cell Label and Point Label tabs have check-boxes to control the visibility of the labels. If the labels are turned on, the Label Mode, Font Size, Font (including bolding, italicizing and shadowing), Alignment, Opacity and Color can be set.