The new SelFence command, along with the addition of Fence as an option in the Trim and Extend commands, now offers a more efficient way of selecting objects in an irregular area.
Why Fence?
Previously, the SelBrush command could be used, but it required a drag-selection, not point-to-point or using an existing curve as a selection input. The new SelFence command and Fence selection method now allow you to draw a line/curve through the objects you would like to select, adding any objects that are intersected to the active selection.
@Matt_Bennett, interesting. Inside the Trim and Extend commands, Fence acts like a shortcut instead of typing SelFence or any other selection option. I’m not sure if Fence is the right word inside the command options and to be honest I’m not even sure if the selection method should be inside command options.
What other Rhino commands have shortcuts for selection methods inside the command options?
I thought instead of typing ‘F’ + Enter, SelFence could be triggered with an Instant Alias ‘SF’ but it seems this does not work inside a command.
Hi, the current trimming process lacks a live preview. I suggest adding a real-time cutting preview so users can see the trimming effect as they go, not after it’s done
Hi @Matt_Bennett ,
This is a very great addition and deserve a much more attention.
Hiding this functionality as option of the trim tool is making it harder to discover and , instead, it may become a full command.
In addition it should be even more automatic: in many Cad the trim tool works for the curve by finding all the possible intersection and letting the user to just drag over and cut away while moving.
In general terms this is less efficient and drives to multiple unneeded intersection but beginners would like it due to the higher interactivity.
It would be like having all the curve selected before the trim tool ( exactly like beginners do today) and use the fence mode to drag around and cut things
Late to the party but this will be a great feature for our CNC customers when cleaning up 2d geometry for cutting. Just tried it out it works well much appreciated! @Matt_Bennett
Is there any special functionality if the fence line self intersects? could that make it select everything within the fence line? I could see that being useful. Particularly when creating holes in complex designs. For example holes in large routed acoustic wall panels.
As things progress, I’m sure this will be applied to tools that would benefit from the fence selection option. However, you can use SelFence for now prior to running many commands to pre-select the input.
I am personally hoping that it becomes possible to switch the selection style to Fence or any of the other selection options other than box select. It would be nice to set a default that gets used each time you perform a selection and to be able to change another selection mode as default on the fly.
3DSMax had: Rectangle, Circle, Lasso and Polygon selection style. It was super useful to set any of these as the default selection style that stay active after the initial use.
Reminds me of the paint select that some 2d paint programs have.