Lasso selection¶

The Lasso tool draws a freeform region and selects every placement (or, for Mesh3D, every vertex) whose center falls inside the region. It is the right tool for selecting top-N% of a wing, a corner of a reference image, or a clump of irregularly-placed shapes.

Activate¶

Path	Action
Toolbox > Controls > Lasso Select	Click the icon
Keyboard	`Shift+Q`

The cursor becomes a pen icon. Drag freely to outline the region; the trailing edge auto-closes when you release.

Modifier behavior¶

Modifier	Effect
Shift	Add lassoed items to current selection
Alt	Subtract lassoed items from current selection
Ctrl	Intersect: keep only what's both lassoed and currently selected
(none)	Replace selection

Selection mode¶

The Tool Properties dock under the View Panel shows the lasso's options:

Mode: Replace / Add / Subtract / Intersect (same as the modifiers above, made sticky).
Through obscured: include placements hidden behind others. Off by default.
Closed region only: only count items inside a fully closed lasso. On by default; off treats the lasso as an open path and selects everything within a threshold distance of the path.

Mesh3D vertex selection¶

When a Mesh3D placement is selected at the time you start the lasso, the tool selects vertices instead of placements. The selected vertices show as orange dots in the View Panel.

Use vertex-mode lasso to:

Select the top 20% of wing vertices for a localized texture mask (see Render part mask).
Pick the corner of a model for landmark placement.
Highlight a sub-region before a deformer is applied.

To return to placement-mode lasso, click empty canvas to deselect the Mesh3D, then lasso.

Practical patterns¶

Select all landmark dots inside the wing¶

With the lasso (placement mode), drag around the wing area: every landmark pair whose center is inside the lasso becomes selected.

Pick the top of a hill of placements¶

In a scene with 30 confetti placements, lasso just the top fifteen. The lasso's freeform shape is faster than Shift-clicking each one.

Quick exclusion¶

Hold Alt and lasso a hand-shaped exclusion region around a few placements you want to not be in the selection. Done in one gesture.

Tablet support¶

With a pen, the lasso recognizes pressure (stable vs jittery) and applies a small amount of stroke smoothing. A confident long stroke produces a clean lasso even on a noisy line.

Paint Select alternative¶

For brush-style "paint over what you want" selection (instead of outlining), see Paint Select (Ctrl+Shift+Q). Paint Select is better when the items you want do not sit inside one closed region.