Previewing and Highlighting Entity Selections

Entities are highlighted when you move the cursor over them (preview highlighting) or when you select them (selection highlighting).

By default, the color of the entities changes in both situations.

Highlighting helps you recognize whether the entities are elementary ones (such as Lines or Arcs) or compound ones (such as Blocks, Dimensions, Polylines, RichLines, or Tables) before and during entity selection.

You can customize preview highlighting and selection highlighting by:

• Using legacy dashed-style entity highlighting instead of colors
• Changing the highlighting colors
• Controlling preview highlighting independently when a command is active or inactive
• Excluding certain command types from highlighting: entities on locked layers, References, Tables, Notes, Hatches, and entities which are part of EntityGroups

Use the Options command to customize the settings.

  Note: If your computer does not support colored highlighting, the software uses dashed-style entity highlighting.

To set the color for preview highlighting and selection highlighting:

1. In the Options dialog box, click System Options.
2. Expand Display > Element Colors.
3. To change the highlighting behavior back to legacy dashed-style entity highlighting, select Use dashed entity selection.

   In this case, you cannot access the Dynamic Highlight and Selected Entity items in the list of elements and the following steps are obsolete.

   If you deactivated Use dashed entity selection:

   • Specify a value for the Selection highlight effect opacity between 0.10 and 1.00.
   • Specify a value for the Selection highlight effect thickness between 2.00 and 8.00.
4. In the list, click Dynamic Highlight.
5. In Color, specify the color for preview highlighting.

   The default color is Orange.

   The default color is Orange.

6. In the list, click Selected Entity.
7. In Color, specify the color for selection highlighting.

   The default color is Blue.

   The default color is Light Blue.

8. Click Apply.

To set preview highlighting options:

1. In the Options dialog box, click User Preferences.
2. Expand Drafting Options > Entity Selection > Pre-selected Highlighting and set:
   1. When prompted to specify entities: Highlights entities when you are prompted to specify entities during command execution and you move the cursor over the entities.
   2. Between commands: Highlights entities when you move the cursor over them if no command is active.
3. Click Apply.

To exclude entities from highlighting:

1. In the Options dialog box, click User Preferences.
2. Expand Drafting Options > Entity Selection > Preview Filter.
3. In Exclude, select entity types to exclude from highlighting:
   • Entities on locked layers: Excludes entities on locked layers.
   • Notes: Excludes Notes.
   • References: Excludes entities in externally referenced drawings (References).
   • Hatches: Excludes Hatches and gradient color fills.
   • Tables: Excludes Tables.
   • Groups: Excludes entities in EntityGroups.
4. Click Apply.