Show Nodes within Selection?



  • I have "Show Nodes of Selected Shapes" selected in preferences, but when I make a large selection of nodes in the art board, I only see the bounding box. There are times I like this uncluttered way of seeing things, but other times I want to see all the nodes light up so I know what I have selected. Am I missing a step or a setting?

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  • administrators

    @Boldline That looks OK. What happens here is that VS skips showing the nodes for complex shapes, or large groups.
    I'm not sure, what would be the right limit here, but at some point it is not very efficient to show those nodes.

    Maybe showing only the starting node of each path?



  • @vectoradmin "not very efficient to show those nodes"- because it eats up system resources?

    It's ultimately your decision as the developer. As far as my opinion goes, I'm torn on whether it's better to try to go forward with it using minimal selection (just bounding box), see if adding just the starting node as you suggested, or if it's better to give the full option and allow for a keyboard shortcut/menu item toggle like in Illustrator.

    I know it's been the default operation in Illustrator - (though you have the option in the menu in Illustrator to toggle only see the bounding box of all selected shapes if you prefer that) I liked the toggle option and used it when I needed to things would otherwise get bogged down but be able to flip back and forth to be sure I had what I wanted selected, etc...

    This is my go-to solution thought - give the user the choice and even leave the minimalist method the default instead of what Illustrator does.
    To me, I would remove this as a preferences option and just make it a toggled option with a menu click and a keyboard shortcut. Because I could see it being used both ways at different points in a design; I know I did this often in my work in Illustrator

    I was looking at Affinity Designer and they select all nodes and paths when large groups are selected
    Obviously we don't need to do what any other program does or does not do - but giving perspective on other vector app solutions

    I'd be curious what other people's views/ideas/solutions are on this topic