DocsSelect Through
Select Through
New in 1.0.8 In Blender's Edit Mode, a box selection in a solid view only reaches what you can see; to reach the back of a model you turn on X-ray, which makes everything see-through. Select Through lets box, lasso and circle selection reach hidden geometry while your view stays solid.
Use it, step by step#
- Select a mesh and press Tab for Edit Mode, where you work on its vertices, edges and faces.
- Turn on Select Through: in Manual mode, the button beside X-ray in the 3D view's header; in Director, the same button in the top bar, after the menus. Or press Z and choose it in the shading pie.
- Drag a box (or use lasso or circle select). Everything inside it is selected, the front and the back, while the model stays solid.
- The selected vertices, edges and face dots behind the surface show faintly through it, so you can see what you caught. Blender's selection counts include them.
- Click the button again to turn it off. Undo and Redo step through selections as usual and leave the button as it is.
Where it works#
| Mode | What Select Through changes |
|---|---|
| Edit Mode, meshes (vertices, edges, faces) | Box, lasso and circle reach what X-ray reaches. Faces are tested by their center, as in X-ray. |
| Weight Paint and Vertex Paint, with the vertex selection mask on | Box, lasso and circle reach hidden vertices. |
| Particle Edit (hair and particles) | Box, lasso and circle reach hidden hair and particle points. |
The button shows only in those modes. Elsewhere, such as Object Mode, armatures, curves, Grease Pencil, lattices and metaballs, box, lasso and circle already reach hidden things. The face selection mask of the paint modes isn't supported.
The button is grayed out while X-ray already selects through: in Edit Mode whenever X-ray is on, and in the paint vertex mask and Particle Edit while X-ray is see-through. In the paint vertex mask and Particle Edit, what you reached behind the surface shows when you turn the view.
What stays as it was#
- Clicking a spot still picks what is under the cursor. Only drag selections reach through.
- Tools that find the nearest element, such as loop cut, the knife, shortest path and snapping, work as before.
- Particle brushes work as before.
- With Select Through off, selection and drawing are exactly Blender's.
Shortcut and default#
Select Through has no key, so your Blender keys stay as they are. To give it one, right-click the button and choose Assign Shortcut.
It is a setting of each 3D view, saved with the view in your .blend file; Blender ignores it when it opens the file. To have it on in every new file, turn it on, then use File ▸ Defaults ▸ Save Startup File.
The agent never needs it: it sets selections directly rather than dragging in your view, so the button is yours alone.