Selecting Elements Based on Attributes

When you use the Element Selection tool, you can select, or group, the elements by a variety of means, including by:

level
color
line style
line weight
type
class
template

For example, you can request MicroStation to select all text elements or all elements with line weight 3. You can even specify search criteria based on different kinds of attributes — for example, green, dotted arc elements on level 22 and level 23.

By default, selected elements are bracketed with squares called handles. If any elements are selected, an arrowhead icon is displayed in the status bar. The number to the right of the icon is the number of selected elements.

The Select By Attributes dialog is used to select elements based on specified criteria.

Select elements (in a sense, extend the Element Selection).
Locate elements.
Filter the elements that are displayed.

Selection criteria can be saved in separate files for reuse.

The Select By Attributes dialog provides additional attribute-based element selection options — selection by attached tag values and by properties. Properties include the area attribute (Solid or Hole), whether an element can be snapped to, whether it is locked, and whether it has been modified.

This dialog also provides the capability to filter the display of elements based on their attributes.

Note: For criteria settings to be effective, the third unlabeled option menu under Mode must be set to On.

Note: When you close the Select By dialog, an alert box displays:

Click OK to continue to apply the Select By settings.
Click Cancel to unload the "selectby.ma" MDL application.

Note: Key-ins must be activated by the key-in SELECTBY EXECUTE. SELECTBY must be loaded (MDL LOAD SELECTBY) and the type cleared by keying in SELECTBY TYPE NONE.