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Can't figure out how to select a complex object with many layers


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Hi! I am loving affinity designer in comparison to ai...however, there is something so easy that I can't figure out for the life of me!

I have a doc/file that has many objects and each has a lot of layers.  These layers aren't ordered in groups; therefore, I need to find a select group of layers among the many. I know that I need to click the Shift and have the multilayer button active and " keep clicking through the all the layers to select them"... the problem is that some of the layers have tiny object and I can't get the cursor to acknowledge through the mess of affinity's blue lines (the ones showing that you've selected something).

The bottom line...I am hoping that there is a way to just use a marque, a selection brush, or whatever to just selection the object in one motion.  When I've tried to do this is puts the marching ants, but none of the coordinating layers are high lighted.

I would be most grateful for any advice!

Bernie

 

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Sometimes zooming in helps to make more accurate object selections, also in the App Preferences under Tools enabling the ...

Quote

Choose whether an object is added to a selection when partially covered by the selection marquee or whether it has to be encompassed by the marquee.

... can be handy here. - See therefor (Tools options).

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On the small shapes you could use the Navigator Panel to zoom in and make it easier to select those layers

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Thank you. I will zoom in. I’m getting a little less annoyed now. I’m so used to being able to simply drag over an object and the layers are automatically selected. 

But I am finding affinity to be a lot more fun than adobe products. :)

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23 hours ago, JBOM said:

 I’m so used to being able to simply drag over an object and the layers are automatically selected.

You can change this in your preferences so you can select layers like you do in Illustrator. Under Preferences, go to Tools, and then tick off the box that says, "Select object when intersects with selection marquee."

It's been so long since I used Illustrator now, I forgot that was one of the things it does.

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