Proposal: Make Box select act differently depending on drag direction

to just start the selection in the right spot in the beginning

The problem is that it’s not always obvious where to start.

Probably not the best example, but should show the problem.
I need to select one half. I start from the outside and then I can clearly see where I need to stop.

But in the following case it’s easy to miss.

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This is why I proposed “hold space to re-adjust the selection”:

This was quite easy to do but it’s a bit annoying that “play animation” is triggered if the mouse button is released before space bar.

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Bro, there are tons of tools in blender that would greatly benefit from that “industry standard” behavior hahahahaha. Well done.

Too bad it will be ignored. :frowning:


And why on earth there are people seeing problems in an optional feature? :upside_down_face: come on

Ok I fixed that playback problem by setting Repeat: false on “play animation” in the keymap. Maybe this should be a separate patch that can be implemented before all the other stuff.
edit: https://developer.blender.org/D9227

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The discussion is not about having an optional feature or not, but about the best & most fitting way to add it to Blender and as you can see some like “the standard CAD” way & others don’t.

The proposal is what it is, and since it’s optional, the people who don’t like should just ignore it and not use it.
The endless debate makes no sense. I can’t believe people are even suggesting to turn this feature into a modal operator. Seriously?

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Dude, what’s up with the attitude Relax.
I want to use this feature but in a certain way, you’re entitled to your opinion as i, and i want it to work with a modal shortcut , nothing wrong with that.
This is how it’s done in every part of Blender tools, do i have to repeat that many times for people to get it?.

Also you’re contradicting your own statement hahah

You’re happy with adding modal shortcut “space bar” but against this feature for selection tools having other shortcuts :man_facepalming:

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That is awesome!!! :star_struck:

It seems the issue here is that the feature here is to be able to “Select only objects fully inside or also objects only touching the border” rather than “Select differently depending on drag direction”.

The “select differently depending on drag direction” is the way to access the feature. There may be several of them.

So there should be something like a Select Elements dropdown with three options:

  • Intersects Border - Select elements that intersect the selection border
  • Fully Inside - Select only elements fully inside the selection border
  • Interactive Mode - Depending on mouse drag direction

This will be on the toolbar and for the keymap item.

And a modal shortcut for “Intersects Border” / “Fully Inside” in case if you started selecting and at the end noticed that some objects overlap, you may want to include/exclude these objects. In this case it is much easier to press the modal shortcut than to start the selection again in the “right” direction or switch the mode.

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My first thought was to only implement it depending on direction but it has grown out of control, and I will see when I get time to continue this.

Yes, overthinking usually destroys everything. The proposal was perfect at the start. shame

I have updated the patch a few times since last post here. Go there to see the current state: https://developer.blender.org/D9180

People are still debating what the different modes should be called as you can see in the comments there. Would appreciate input here too.

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It would be nice to have just one modal shortcut which switches the selection type, Intersect/Inner, to the opposite of the current (performed) one. This is incredibly convenient.


For names, I think it’s best not to talk about everything at once, Intersect/Inner, Left/Right, Default; it’s all different. Let’s say you have an option that allows you to select objects by intersecting them, not only fully framed ones.

Intersecting Selection (Allow selection of items that intersect with the selection border and not just fully framed ones)

  • Always (Select items intersecting with selection border)
  • Left to Right (Only with the left to right mouse movement)
  • Right to Left (Only with the right to left mouse movement)
  • None (Select only items that are fully framed by the selection border)
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Yes I’ve thought about having a modal shortcut for that. It’s not a problem really but it would have to be on all the different select-operators then I guess… It’s only 4 at the moment though. Haven’t really prototyped it… maybe there is a better way to solve it.

Hey, did you end up releasing this addon eventually? I’m looking for something exactly like that

@itai What’s being discussed here is an actual patch for Blender, which brings a feature to Blender’s code. As such, it cannot be an addon. However, the functionality is being developed further here: X-Ray selection experiments build
You can download the Blender build and extract its contents to the folder where you (want to) install your software. Also, feel free to head over to that topic and post any feedback/ ideas related to the buid there.

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I hope the patch doesn’t get abandoned.

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Same here. It’s really useful to have this kind of selection options

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@xan2622 & @dimitar You should really go check @lcas’ work, because from my understanding it is only the UI that needs to be figured out for this one to be submitted as a patch.

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