Lightwave Tip: Selecting Objects

If you’re new to Lightwave v9, like I am some of the basics in the program, are a little odd.

One of the commands that I thought should be a no brainer is how to select all the points, polygons, edges on an object if you have more then 1 object in a layer. I watched a video about performing the Speed Boolean operation to subtract a disc from a sphere. One of the steps in the video is selecting the disc. The disc is in the middle of the sphere surrounded by polygons. So how do you select all those polygons quickly?

Here’s the quick method…

1. Draw a disc in the FRONT viewport and then drag it out in the RIGHT viewport so its a long disc. It’ll look like a cylinder.
2. Next draw a sphere so it covers the middle part of the disc on all sides. What you should have is a disc poking out of the middle of the sphere on the front and back of the sphere. Make sure you click “MAKE” in the lower middle of the LW window. That sets your cylinder as an object. ( you can also hit enter).
3. Its a quick 2-step process to select that cylinder. Hit the spacebar until the word “Polygons” is lit OR just hit “CTRL + H”.
4. Click any polygon on the disc. The easiest one to get to are the two polygons at the top and bottom of the disc.
5. Click simply hit the ” ] ” button on the keyboard. (This button triggers the View -> Selection -> Connected command. We are telling Lightwave select all polygons connected to this polygon. You can do the same thing for Points and Edges as well. First click a point and then click the ” ] ” key.
6. Voila! all polygons are selected for this object.
7. If you want to unselect all polygons just click the ” / ” key.

With this in mind, doing a Speed Boolean is so much faster then before. You can visit Newtek’s website at http://www.newtek.com/lightwave/tutorials/videos/index.php and watch the video tutorial on Speed Booleans.

I like the Lightwave buttons for Points. Edges, and Polygons so why can’t we get a buttons called “Object” to put down there too?
I’d love just to click the objects button and then click a polygon on an object to select all of the polys.