Selections versus editing of properties

Selections are very advanced feature of SCIA Engineer. They do not provide just for the passive selection of entities that will be further treated in some way. The selections represent a powerful tool for editing of the project.

The principle is that whenever whichever entity is inserted into a current selection, its properties are automatically and immediately displayed in the property window of the application.

If multiple entities of the same type are selected then the intersection of their properties is displayed in the window. If multiple entities of different types are selected, the user may choose the type whose properties should be displayed. It is of course possible to simply swap between the types once the parameters for one type have been reviewed.

What’s more, any data displayed in the property window can be edited and the change is immediately recorder.

Editing in the property window for one selected entity

If just one entity is selected, the property window shows it’s properties and, if possible, co-ordinates of its endpoints. Once the user changes any of the values in the property window, the change is recorder and the entity is re-displayed to reflect the changes.

Editing in the property window for multiple selected entities of the same type

If several entities of the same type are selected, the property window displays the intersection of their properties. That means that the dialogue contains values of those parameters which are identical. If any parameters are of different value for different 1D members in the selection, the value cell in the property window is left blank.

The user may once again edit any item in the property window. This relates even to the blank cells. If a value is input into any of the cells, that value is assigned to all the entities in the selection.

Editing in the property window for multiple selected entities of various types

Here the same can be said as in the paragraph above. What’s more, the combo box at the top part of the property window contains a list of all types whose entities are in the current selection. When the used selects any item from this list, the properties of this entity type are shown in the property window.

The user may then review or edit them as described above.

Note: See also chapter Controlling the selection-versus-editing process.