The wand slot: Magic Wand and Lasso
The wand slot holds two tools. Magic Wand is the default occupant, and Lasso is behind the slot's triangle. Open the flyout to swap them, and the slot keeps whichever you picked.
Magic Wand (Y) selects by appearance. Click one object and every other object that looks similar is selected with it. Similar means fill, stroke, stroke width and opacity, each compared within its own tolerance. Locked and hidden objects are skipped, which is exactly what you want: lock a background you have finished with and the wand will stop picking it up.
Lasso (Q) selects by area. Drag a freeform loop and every object whose centre falls inside the loop is selected. Hold Shift while you drag to add to the existing selection. The loop you draw is transient and is removed when you release. The Lasso has no settings; its option bar is a single line of hint text.
Centre-based selection is the thing to remember. A large object can be almost entirely inside your loop and still be missed, because its centre sits outside. Loop wider than feels necessary.
Selecting by appearance from the menu
The wand is not the only way to select alike things. The Select menu carries a Same submenu with six entries: Fill Color, Stroke Color, Stroke Weight, Fill & Stroke, Opacity and Object Type. Select one object, then pick the axis you care about. Where the wand judges the whole appearance at once, these pick a single property, which is often more predictable.
The same menu has Inverse to flip the selection, and an Object submenu with Text Objects and Stray Points. Stray Points is worth running before you export anything you care about.
The probe slot
The probe slot holds four tools that all answer questions about your artwork rather than change it. The Eyedropper is the default occupant; Measure, Dimension and Perspective Grid are in the flyout.
- Eyedropper (F7). Hover and a live swatch shows the colour under the tip. Click to apply that colour to the fill of every selected object and to the toolbar default. Shift+click applies it to the stroke instead. So select first, then sample.
- Measure. A read-only overlay that never touches your artwork or your history. Drag from A to B for a live line labelled with length and angle plus the x and y deltas. Hold Ctrl to lock the line to 15 degree steps. The line stays put afterwards with draggable endpoints, crossings with your artwork are marked with per-segment distances, and hovering an object reports its width by height.
- Dimension. Drag from A to B and it places a real dimension annotation into the document: a measurement line, end ticks and a numeric length label at the midpoint, grouped together. Unlike Measure, this is artwork. It exports, it prints, and you can delete it.
- Perspective Grid. Sets up a one, two or three point grid with vanishing points on a draggable horizon.
Two things about the probe tools that catch people out
Measure and Dimension look alike and are not alike. Measure is scaffolding you throw away; it leaves nothing in the file. Dimension produces an object that lives in the document like any other path. If you want a drawing annotated for someone else to read, you want Dimension.
The Perspective Grid draws into the overlay layer. The guides render on screen but they are not serialised into the document and they do not appear in an export. View ▸ Perspective Grid… opens its options and View ▸ Hide Perspective Grid turns it off.
The Measure option bar rounds out the rest: a readout with a unit (px, mm, cm or in), decimal places from 0 to 4 with a default of 2, three checkboxes labelled Ignore ends, Between and Only sel, a Reverse button that swaps ends A and B, and Clear.
Keys worth knowing here
| Keys | Does |
|---|---|
| Y | Magic Wand |
| Q | Lasso |
| F7 | Eyedropper |
| V | Select tool |
| Ctrl+A | Select all |
| Ctrl+Shift+A | Deselect |
| Escape | Back out of the current gesture |
| Ctrl+Z | Undo |
Measure, Dimension and the Perspective Grid have no shortcuts. Reach them through the probe slot's flyout.
Common questions
The Magic Wand keeps missing objects that look identical to me.
It compares fill, stroke, stroke width and opacity, each against its own tolerance. Two objects that read as the same colour on screen can differ enough to fall outside one of those. If you only care about one property, use Select ▸ Same ▸ Fill Color (or Stroke Color, or Opacity) instead, which tests that property alone.
Why did my Lasso miss a shape that was clearly inside the loop?
The Lasso selects any object whose centre is inside the loop. A long shape can have most of its body in your loop while its centre sits outside. Draw a wider loop, or use the Magic Wand if the shapes share an appearance.
I clicked with the Eyedropper and nothing changed colour.
Nothing was selected. The Eyedropper applies the sampled colour to the fill of every selected object and to the toolbar default. Select with V first, then sample. Shift+click targets the stroke rather than the fill.
Do my Measure lines end up in the exported file?
No. Measure is a read-only overlay and it never writes to your artwork or your history. If you want a measurement that survives export, use the Dimension tool, which places a real annotation group into the document.