The Select tool acts like pressing the <Esc> key to cancel another command and enable graphical selection of model objects.
To select an object, click on the Select tool, or press <Esc>, or select Select from the right-click context menu, then move the mouse cursor to the object to be selected and click with the mouse to select it. The colour of the object temporarily changes to light red to indicate that it is selected.
To select multiple objects, use one of the following methods:
Press and hold the <Ctrl> key while clicking on objects, or,
Drag a selection rectangle (aka "rubber band") by pressing and holding the left mouse button and dragging a window across the required selection area. When you release the mouse button, all the objects that are entirely within the selection window will be selected. Any objects that are only partially within the selection rectangle will not be selected. This is often the preferred selection method when many objects need to be selected as it doesn't require each item to be clicked on individually.
The screenshots below illustrate the process.
Dragging a selection rectangle around all blocks in a model
On releasing the mouse key, the objects are selected.
Tip: If you need to select most objects within an area, but not all of them, you can use the selection rectangle tool to select all objects and then deselect the objects that do not need to be selected by holding the <Ctrl> key and clicking on them.
Note: When using the selection rectangle please be aware that any openings in the selection rectangle that are hidden by model surfaces will also be selected. It is therefore important to carefully check which openings have been selected when using the select command before carrying out a significant operation on the selection set, such as deletion.
See also the Selecting, moving, cloning and deleting objects tutorial.