100 Circles. Secrets of AutoCAD QSELECT

In this guest post from Ibrahim Khwaja we will learn the how to use one of AutoCAD’s most powerful, but often overlooked commands – QSELECT.

When working on large scaled projects, one is often faced with the challenge of effectively manipulating certain elements within the drawing.

As the number of changes required increases, so does the redundancy in your workflow.

As shown below, the multiple selection is a good way if your objects are all close by.

Figure 1 – Objects that are close together can be selected with a crossing window.

Figure 2 – Or they can be selected with the Lasso tool…

Figure 3 – But what about now?!

Figure 4 – Lasso tool anyone!

QSELECT is a command that provides quick access to the needles in the haystack. Just type QSELECT as show below

Figure 5 The AutoCAD QSELECT command.

And voilà, the QSELECT menu.

Figure 6 – The QSELECT menu

For this time, we’ll be focusing on circles for our selection with a whiff of the rest of the options. Select Circle from the object type option select circles only.

Figure 7 – Select ‘CIRCLE’ from the object type.

Within the circle option you get to select your desired criteria and filter out what you want. For this tutorial, I’m going to use the operator “<” to select only the smallest circles. With that enter the value, as shown below.

Figure 8 – Select all Circles with a radius less than 3

Figure 9 – All circles with a Radius less than 3″ have been selected

The QSELECT command offers other predefined functions that are more than handy. To capture all polygon elements with a specific area see below.

Figure 10 – Selecting Polygons with Areas less than 3

Figure 11 – All polygons with an Area less than 3 have been selected.

As the menu showed, there are multiple options for the user to select different kinds of elements. Tinker around with it to experience a significant boost in workflow and productivity.

If interested in more tutorials, check out these AutoCAD exercises.

Ibrahim Khwaja

I am a Mechanical Engineer by profession and a CAD (Computer Aided Design) Engineer. I have been offering my services in the field of CAD modelling and design for the past 4 years employing softwares such as Solidworks, Keyshot and Autocad to achieve my goals.My services range from designing for 3D Printing, Sheet Metal, Injection Molding and Manufacturing processes to providing Photo-Realistic Rendered Images.

I happen to find the utmost satisfaction in bringing ideas to life allowing me to demonstrate my creativity, designing and imaginative skills. My passion for this field allows me to truly relish challenging projects that come my way. I believe my experience coupled with your vision would allow me to provide you with fresh ideas and solutions that are not only practical but aesthetic too.

I have also made myself available for writing tutorials for 12CAD.com assisting both neophytes and experts in the field of CAD.