# Selecting elements

When you click on any element on the flowsheet it becomes selected. The flowsheet shows selections by highlighting the selected elements. In this context an element can be a pipe, a fluid equipment item (node) or an annotation. It is possible to select more than one element or to deselect already selected elements. There are 3 available methods for making multiple selections. 1.On the flowsheet, hold down the SHIFT key and use the mouse to select or deselect components. 2.Move to the Lists tab and make multi-selections from the list box by using the SHIFT and Ctrl keys. 3.Mark off an area of any shape using either marker tool. The ability to make multi-selections is an important program feature. With multi-selections you can make changes in the input editor and changes are made to all selected elements. If you wish to make a printout or export and you have more than one element selected then only the selected elements get printed or exported. You can delete more than one element at a time, drag all selected items together, etc. List Synchronization The flowsheet and the various Views (tabs) in the Data Palette are synchronized, making the combination of multi-selection and the List tab very powerful. If you hold down the SHIFT key while making a mouse click on an element then the following occurs... if the element is not selected it becomes selected; if the element is already selected then it becomes unselected. In the screen display below four Tee junctions have been selected using this method. At the same time the identical junctions in the List have been highlighted - click on the Lists Tab in the Data Palette and tick the junctions box, see below... Conversely, to make multi-selections using the list box use either the SHIFT or Ctrl keys together with left mouse clicks. Mark off an area of any shape using the marker tool(s). Sometimes you may wish to select all of the elements in a given area. Usually the area required is rectangular, but if you normally use the iso mode for layout, then rectangular areas are often not the most useful. To provide the maximum flexibility there are two area marker tools. The upper tool allows for marking rectangular areas The lower tool is used for marking an area of any shape. Both tools work in a similar way. A complex shape is drawn in the diagram below. Double clicking the left mouse button will join the last point to the first point, mark off all the selected items in the dotted region, and reset the tool to the selection tool. Rectangular areas are also defined by using a double click. The same area after a double click is shown below. Note that if an element lies partially in the marked area it will also be selected. You can see that the pipe leaving the non-return valve is an illustration of this in the above diagram.