Selection System
 

Description:

    Silo supports object, texture, face, edge, and vertex selection modes. Silo's workflow hinges on the use of these selection modes. When in a particular selection mode, you will be able to select components of the scene which are of that type. The object mode, as in most other packages which support it, is really nothing more than a classification system. In general, whenever you create a piece of geometry which is not attached to any other existing geometry it will be created as a new object. Objects can be merged together or parts of a mesh can be cut out and made into a separate object. Thus any set of geometry can be an object. In object mode, you edit each entire object as if it were a single component. Some tools, such as Shell, can only be applied to whole objects. In any other selection mode, only the objects which were selected while in object mode will be editable -- similar to a layer system. Face, edge, and vertex modes allow you to edit the faces, edges, and vertices of selected objects, respectively. Texture selection mode is really the same as face selection mode, except that all manipulator edits on a face selection in texture mode will edit the textures on those faces rather than the faces themselves.

    Many of Silo's operations are based on the position of the manipulator. There are five basic manipulator tools: universal, move, scale, rotate, and no manipulator. Additionally, a tool manipulator with spherical handles will appear while using some tools, such as bevel. These tools are interactive, and dragging on any of the handles will modify the effect of the tool, e.g. change the amount of bevel.  You can either work with the manipulators, grabbing their handles to perform your transformations, or you can set up your keyboard shortcuts and mouse to work completely without the manipulator. 

    Silo's workflow depends on frequent cycling of selection and manipulator modes, so use of the default hotkeys or hotkeys of your own is strongly recommended.

Default mode and manipulator key settings:
q - Universal manipulator
w - Move manipulator
e - Scale manipulator
r - Rotate manipulator
t - No manipulator
a - Vertex selection mode
s - Edge selection mode
d - Face selection mode
f - Object selection mode
g - Texture selection mode

    Silo supports two different types of selection: visible and thru. Imagine selecting all of the vertices of a sphere using area select. With the visible selection, mapped to the left mouse button by default, only the vertices on the side of the sphere facing you will be selected. With thru selection, however, any vertices within the area of the selection will be selected, so the entire sphere would be selected. Thru selection is mapped to the middle mouse button in the default setup. Any selection function (see list below) performed with the mouse can be performed using either visible or thru selection.

Selection functions:
- You can select an individual component (object, face, texture, edge, or vertex) by clicking on it. This will not preserve the previous selection (Select Visible New or Select Thru New are the mouse function names for this).
- Click and drag to perform an area select.
- Hold Shift while selecting to add components to the current selection.
- Hold Alt+Shift while selecting to remove components from the current selection.
- Hold Ctrl+Shift while selecting to toggle components between selected and deselected.