Selection

Most commands act on the selected shapes. The Actions panel lists what you can do with them, and the Attributes panel what you can change about them.

The Selection multi-button in the Tools panel holds two selection tools.

Selection tools

Rectangular selection

Rectangular selection is the default tool. It selects shapes one at a time or with a selection box.

• Select one shape: click it.
• Select multiple shapes: drag a selection box on empty board. Dragging from left to right selects every shape the box touches; dragging from right to left selects only the shapes entirely inside it.
• Toggle shapes in the selection: hold Shift while you click or drag. Shapes that were selected leave the selection; the others join it.
• Temporarily use Paint selection: hold Alt while dragging a selection box, and the tool switches back when you release.
• Clear the selection: click on empty board.

Paint selection

Paint selection is designed for situations where modifier keys are out of reach, such as touch screens or pen tablets. Everything is done with taps and strokes, and each one toggles what it touches: selected shapes leave the selection and the others join it.

• Add or remove one shape: tap it.
• Add or remove several shapes: drag across them, starting on empty board. A stroke that starts on a shape or on the selection moves it instead.
• Clear the selection: tap on empty board.

Selecting groups and frames

Groups

A group joins several shapes into one unit so they move, resize, and style together. Select shapes and click Group shapes in the Actions panel to create one. See Grouping.

• Select the group: click any of its shapes. The whole group is selected.
• Work inside the group: double-click it, or select it and click Enter edit mode in the Actions panel, then click a shape to select it alone. Groups can be nested, so double-click again to go one level deeper.
• Leave the group: click on empty board outside it. Clicking empty space inside the group only clears the selection.

The whole robot selected as a group:

Inside the group, only the orange button is selected:

Frames

A frame is a named container. Shapes inside it belong to it, so moving the frame moves them, and it can be resized or fitted around its content.

• Select the frame: click its heading or its border.
• Select shapes inside it: click them.
• Box-select inside it: a frame only joins a box selection when the whole frame is inside the box, so you can drag over its content without grabbing the frame.

Ghosting shapes

Ghosting moves a shape out of the pointer's way without changing the board. It helps with overlapping shapes: ghost the ones on top, one at a time, until you can click the shape you want.

• Operation: point at a shape and press Tab. The shape doesn't need to be selected. On a touch screen, open the context menu on the shape and choose Ghost shape under pointer.
• Result: the topmost shape under the pointer becomes a faint ghost that clicks and selection boxes pass through. On a camera's outline, it ghosts the camera and hides its lens. Inside a camera, it ghosts the shape the camera covers. Ghosting a frame also ghosts the shapes inside it. On a shape in a group, it ghosts the whole group, unless you're working inside the group. On the content of an embedded board, it ghosts the whole embedded board. Each press ghosts the next shape under the pointer, until only empty board is left.
• Tip: to bring every ghosted shape back, press Tab or use the command over empty board, also inside a frame.

Deleting a selection

Removes the selected shapes from the board.

• Operation: click Delete selection in the Actions panel.
• Result: the selected shapes are removed from the board. What was connected to them:
  • Shapes inside them: a deleted frame, group, or camera takes its content with it.
  • Animation: blocks that animate only deleted shapes are removed. Blocks that also animate other shapes keep animating those.
  • Masks: a mask of a deleted shape stays on the board as an ordinary shape when no other shape uses it. Shapes that a deleted mask covered show in full.
  • Arrows: arrows attached to a deleted shape stay on the board, no longer attached.

Locking shapes

Locking keeps a shape out of the way while you work on the rest of the board. A locked shape cannot be selected or moved by any selection method, so a background, a reference image, or a finished part of the board can't be moved by accident.

Locking a shape

Keeps a shape out of reach of clicks and selection boxes.

• Operation: click one of these in the Actions panel:
  • Lock selected shapes locks the selection.
  • Unlock selected shapes unlocks it, when every selected shape is locked.
• Result: clicks and selection boxes pass over locked shapes as if they were not there.

Disabling all locks temporarily

Lets you work on locked shapes without unlocking them one by one.

• Operation: switch on locks mode next to the Main panel.
• Result: every lock is lifted while the mode is on, so locked shapes can be selected, moved, and edited like any other. Switch it off and they lock again.
• Tip: to unlock a shape for good:
  1. Switch the mode on and select the shape.
  2. Click Unlock selected shapes.
  3. Switch the mode off. When no locked shapes are left, it switches off by itself.

While the mode is on, every locked shape can be moved, so switch it off as soon as you are done.

Named selections

A named selection saves a set of shapes, animation blocks, or both under a name, so you can select them again from the Selections list of the Side panel.

• Order: it remembers the order in which you selected the shapes, which new staggered animations follow. Existing animation blocks keep their own order.
• Membership: saving one changes nothing on the board, and the same shape can belong to several named selections.
• Animation blocks: only saved blocks of the active sequence are selected again.

Groups or named selections

Both let you reach several shapes at once, but they serve different needs:

• Use a group when the shapes belong together as one thing: a diagram with its labels, a character made of parts. The group moves, resizes, and styles as a unit, keeps that structure on the board, and can be nested. See Grouping.
• Use a named selection when you only want to select the same shapes again later. It is more flexible: saving one changes nothing on the board, a shape can be in several of them, and the shapes stay free to be grouped, moved, or animated on their own.

Two terms appear in the list's commands. The named selection is the entry itself, the saved set you click on. The canvas selection is whatever is selected on the board right now.

New, at the bottom of the list, saves the canvas selection as a new entry.

Each entry then has:

• Drag handle: drag it to reorder the list. This only changes the order of the list, not the selections themselves.
• Name: click it to rename the entry.
• Select button: selects the entry's contents:
  • Click: replaces the canvas selection with them.
  • Click with Shift: adds the missing ones to the canvas selection, or removes them all when they are all selected already.
  • Double-click: also fits the canvas camera to them.
  • Hover: highlights them on the board.
• Visibility button: hides the entry's shapes, or shows them all when some are hidden. means they are all visible; means some of them are hidden. Shapes added to an entry with hidden shapes are hidden too. See Visibility.
• Options menu:
  • Add to canvas selection: adds the named selection's contents to the canvas selection.
  • Remove from canvas selection: takes the named selection's contents out of the canvas selection.
  • Add to named selection: adds the canvas selection to the named selection.
  • Remove from named selection: takes the canvas selection out of the named selection.
  • Remove named selection: deletes the entry only; the shapes stay on the board. To delete the shapes themselves, select the entry and click Delete selection in the Actions panel.