Select same, saved selections and global edit in Vectornation

Tools are good for picking what you can see. Menus are better for picking what you can describe. The Select menu in Vectornation by Zaweba gathers several commands that let you choose objects by what they are or what they share, keep a selection for later, and change many similar objects in one go.

None of them is flashy, but on a large file they save a great deal of clicking, and they make some jobs practical that would be tedious by hand.

Select same and select by kind

Select, Same picks objects sharing an attribute. Select one shape with the stroke colour you want to change, choose the matching attribute, and the other shapes that share it join the selection. It is the menu cousin of the Match select tool and suits the moment when you already have the right object selected.

Select, Object works by kind rather than look. It selects objects of a particular type across the drawing. That is useful for tidying an imported file: gather everything of one kind, check it, then delete, group or restyle it as needed.

Saving selections

Building a complicated selection can take a while, especially if it mixes objects from different parts of a drawing. Vectornation lets you save a selection and recall it later. Make the selection once, save it, and when you need the same set of objects again you bring it back rather than rebuilding it.

This helps in jobs you return to often. A map might have a saved selection for the road labels, another for the water and another for the boundaries. A packaging file might have one for the text that changes on each flavour. Each time you revise the job, you recall the set and work on it.

Global edit

Select, Start global edit lets you edit every similar object at once. For artwork that repeats a shape many times, such as a pattern of stars, a row of identical markers in a chart or a logo repeated across a sheet, this means one edit instead of dozens.

It is wise to check the result after a global edit, because the command acts on everything it considers similar. If a shape you wanted to keep different has been changed, undo, alter that shape so it no longer counts as similar, and run the edit again.

Describing the selection

Select, Describe the selection, on Ctrl+Alt+Shift+A, reads the selection in words for screen readers. It turns what is selected into a plain description, so someone who cannot see the canvas well can still learn what they have picked. It is also a handy sanity check for anyone: if you are not sure what a click has caught in a crowded area, ask for a description.

Putting them together

A typical clean-up might run like this. Use Select, Object to pick all the objects of one kind in a file you have been sent. Save that selection. Use Select, Same on a colour to find the off-brand shades and correct them. Then, for a repeated motif, start a global edit and fix the shape once. When the client asks for another change a week later, recall the saved selection and you are back where you were.

Commands that act across the whole drawing can reach farther than you expect, so glance at the whole document after a broad selection and keep undo close. The Select menu is the quiet half of selecting in Vectornation by Zaweba, and on big files it is often the faster half.