Select & Hide

The select and hide concepts have been introduced to allow for more flexibility in visualization and model assignment operations. Selection/hiding can be interactive, using the Model pane, or can be completely command driven — noting that in either case the selection or hidden status of objects is part of the model state and therefore will affect results of subsequent commands.

When objects are hidden, commands do not operate on them — they are “invisible” to commands. The objects are still in the model, though, and cycling computations on hidden objects (i.e., the equations of motion computations) are not affected.

Interactive selection of objects in the Model pane is a necessary precursor to performing a subsequent interactive command operations on them (grouping with the group tool ( ), for instance). However, as with hiding, there are model state implications as well. With regard to the command line, a selected set of objects may be easily targeted by a command using the selected keyword of the range logic.

See the Select and Hide topic in the Problem Solving with FLAC section for fuller discussion.