Selections versus editing of properties

Selections are an 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 properties panel 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 properties panel can be edited and the change is immediately applied.

Editing in the properties panel for one selected entity

If just one entity is selected, the properties panel shows it’s properties and. Once the user changes any of the values in the properties panel, the change is applied and the entity is re-displayed to reflect the changes.

Editing in the properties panel for multiple selected entities of the same type

If several entities of the same type are selected, the properties panel 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 properties panel is set to Mixed and the values can be viewed via a pulldown menu.

The user may once again edit any item in the properties panel. This relates even to the Mixed cells. If a value is chosen or input into any of the cells, that value is assigned to all the entities in the selection.

Editing in the properties panel for multiple selected entities of various types

Here the same can be said as in the paragraph above. What’s more, the top row of icons at the top part of the properties panel contains all types of entities that are in the current selection. When the user selects any item from this list, the properties of this entity type are shown in the properties panel.

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

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