Select Same and Locked Layers (Split)

[Dwon]

I have two layers. In both layers I have green fill colored objects. I only want to select the green objects from layer one and not from layer 2. I attempt to only select the green fill color objects from layer 1 by using the new feature "select same fill color", but even though layer two is hidden and or locked, it still selects the green from layer 2(and from layer 1). Any help is appreciated. Thanks

Edited April 14, 2021 by Dwon

[walt.farrell]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums, @Dwon.

I think that's just the way the new function works. You may need to select a different way, such as (from the Layers panel) the object's name  or color tag. If you go by any of the more general attributes it will select them everywhere.

[Dwon]

Manual selection(even in the layers panel) in a complex document is impractical. I work with a lot of Civil Engineering CAD file exports(pdfs, svg, etc), these are documents have thousands of objects and hundreds of layers. Being able to control what is selected and what is not selected is necessary to document management. I'm a bit confused why locking or hiding the layer doesn't exclude the objects in the layer from being selected. This makes document management much more difficult than necessary. Hopefully I'm just missing something and there is a way to accomplish excluding locked layers and the objects within them from the select same/select object command.

[Danold]

Same problem. How can a whole layer be locked and invisible (for a reason) and then when you select "same stroke width" for example, on the visible and unlocked layer, it INCLUDES THE INVISBLE AND LOCKED LAYER! This is ridiculous. I work with maps with hundreds of thousands of labels and coastline segments and this is a deal breaker for me. How on earth did we arrive at this solution?

Example: I'd like some eggs please, but not the white ones, only the brown ones.

Shopkeeper proceeds to give me the brown and the white ones with a big smile. Order fulfilled.

[GarryP]

Welcome to the forums @Danold

The “Select same” functionalities don’t discriminate between whether a layer is visible or not.
Some people may want it to discriminate and some people may want it not to, depending on their circumstances at the time.
If you would like there to be an option to discriminate (or not) between layer visibility for these functionalities than you can add a Feature Request in the relevant section of the forums (searching for an existing one and ‘adding your voice’ to that would be better).

The “locking” of layers, as has been mentioned many times in the forums elsewhere, is not a “total lock” but a functionality to stop only some things happening to a layer – e.g. reposition/resize.
This has been discussed for years, just search the forums for layer lock – e.g. https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/53810-locking-layer-contents/

[carl123]

@Danold

1 hour ago, Danold said:

I work with maps with hundreds of thousands of labels and coastline segments

I'm pretty sure there is a way to exclude Invisible layers but I've only used it on relatively simple designs. Do you have a sample map document you can upload to the forum, so I can see the document structure/layout you work with to see if it will work for you?

 

[Sam Shimota]

I'm running into the same issue here and wondering why this is still a thing three years later. Coming from Illustrator, where a Layer Lock prevents any selection, "select same selects locked stuff too" functionality is as baffling as it is frustrating. A Layer Lock should lock the Layer–this is a super basic UI concept.

Making a 'super ultra total lock' function would be fine, albeit silly, but honestly I'm just surprised it ever worked this way to begin with. Seems pretty obvious that users working on big documents would need to get granular with "select same" functions.