Home Help Editing tools Selecting several at once

Selecting several at once

Most edits are quicker in bulk. In Edit mode you can select any number of houses, fences and library objects at once, then move, rotate, copy, duplicate, delete or lock the whole lot in one go.

Changing several house types at once

Select any number of houses and pick a type from the toolbar dropdown. Every one of them changes, keeping its own position, angle and handing, and it is one undo step rather than one per house. A selection with more than one type in it shows “— mixed —” rather than claiming they all match the first.

Locked houses are skipped, not refused: the rest change and the message says how many were left alone. Runs work the same way — select any number of fences or walls and pick a style.

Making a selection

To do thisDo that
Select a groupDrag a box on empty ground. Anything the box fully encloses is selected.
Add or remove oneCtrl-click it (-click on a Mac). Clicking a selected one takes it back out.
Add a whole boxHold Ctrl/ while you drag a second box.
Start againClick empty ground, or press Esc.

Selected objects are outlined, with a dashed box around the whole group, and the toolbar tells you what you have — for example ✥ 12 houses, 4 objects selected.

The box selects what it fully encloses, not everything it touches. Clip the edge of a house and that house is left out — which is what you want when you are picking a row out of a dense scheme.

What you can do with a selection

ActionHow
MoveDrag any member. The group keeps its exact shape — nothing shuffles or re-snaps.
RotatePress [ or ], or switch the toolbar to Rotate and drag. The group turns about its own centre. Hold Shift for 15° steps.
Copy & pasteCtrl/+C, then Ctrl/+V to drop a copy at the pointer. Spacing inside the group is preserved.
DuplicateCtrl/+D — a copy appears just beside the original.
DeleteThe Delete key, the 🗑 tool, or right-click ▸ Delete.
Lock / unlockThe 🔓 Lock button, or right-click ▸ Lock. See locking.
A moved group keeps its shape exactly. A single house snaps to its neighbours and the road as you drag it; a group deliberately does not, or the houses inside it would snap to each other and the row would close up as you moved it.

Locked members

A locked house inside a selection is skipped, not a blocker — the rest still move, rotate and delete, and the toolbar says how many were left behind. So pinning the one house you are sure about does not stop you working on the street around it.

Mixed selections

A selection can hold houses, fences and objects together. When it does, only the actions that make sense for everything in it are offered — move, rotate, copy, delete, lock. Anything house-specific, like Flip or changing the house type, applies to one house and is hidden or refused for a group; deselect down to a single house for those.

Fences

Fences can be selected too — box them in, or Ctrl/-click one — and they move, rotate, copy, paste and delete with the rest of the group. A single fence can be copied and pasted on its own as well.

Fences cannot be locked, on their own or in a group. Locking every other object works as usual and the toolbar says how many fences were left out. It is a storage limit rather than a decision: a fence is stored as a plain run of points with nowhere to keep the flag, so a lock on one would quietly disappear the next time the design was saved.
Two things it does not cover yet. Roads, footpaths, driveways and parking bays cannot be part of a selection — use them one at a time. And a selection can only be made with a mouse, so this is a desktop feature for now; the iPad is next.
Shift is not the modifier here. Shift already locks a drag to an axis and snaps a rotation to 15° steps, so adding to a selection is Ctrl/ instead.

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