An AutoCAD Hip Tip on Selecting the "Unselectable"

Well first off - if you haven't seen the fabulous answer Miss South Carolina gave on the Miss Teen USA contest yet - be sure to check this out for a little giggle.  I must admit I do feel sorry for the poor thing as I'm sure she is quite embarassed over this...(but then that didn't stop me from posting the link now did it!)  It's sure to make you smile and we need that when we're dealing with CAD, drawings,managers, and all that other stress we run into at work.

And speaking of stress...

There's nothing more frustrating than trying to select an object in your drawing only to find your selection goes ignored.  You pick and pick and pick to your hearts content and yet AutoCAD turns its nose up at you and pretends you don't exist.  Depending on the type of object that is suddenly invisible to AutoCAD (but not to you), there are a few settings that just might do the trick for you.

An AutoCAD Hip Tip on Selecting the Unselectable:

There are a variety of objects that are sometimes difficult to select.  Images, OLE Objects and wipeouts are the culprits I will address today. 

For example - you have a drawing with an Excel table in it.  The table was inserted with a simple copy/paste - which makes it an OLE object.  You need to move it - but alas, you can't select it!  The system variable OLEFRAME to the rescue.

Here are your settings for OLEFRAME:

0	Frame is not displayed and not plotted
1	Frame is displayed and is plotted
2	Frame is displayed but is not plotted

You will need to set OLEFRAME to 1 or 2 in order to select it.

Or perhaps you have an image in the drawing file.  Same scenario - you can't select it!  You're going to need to use the command IMAGEFRAME to sort this out.

Oddly enough - IMAGEFRAME is an actual AutoCAD command while OLEFRAME is a system variable - go figure!  Here are the settings for IMAGEFRAME:

0          Image frames are not displayed and not plotted.

1          Image frames are both displayed and plotted. This setting is the default.

2          Image frames are displayed but not plotted.

(Ok...basically the same as the settings for OLEFRAME).  It's nice that you can now display the frames for editing purposes, and yet they don't plot...very nice.

So what if you have a wipeout in the drawing?  Well then you're dealing with yet another animal altogether.  In this situation you will use the TFRAMES command to display and edit the frame.  This is a toggle setting so simply keying in TFRAMES will toggle the setting between on and off. Below you can see the wipeouts with TFRAMES off  (left) and with TFRAMES on (right).

So there is my Hip Tip for a Thursday!  Only one more day before the big 3 day weekend in the U.S.  (For the "US-Americans" as Miss So. Carolina would say).  Enjoy!