“Select Similar” is one of the most useful selection tools in Civil 3D.  If you are not using it on a daily basis you are really missing out.  Since all Civil 3D labels are objects, not just Mtext or Dtext, they react to ‘Select Similar’ in a very useful way.

For instance:

Say you have a drawing with Civil 3D contour labels and you want to select all of them to change style or turn on the label line.  In the past you would probably use the Layer Isolate command to isolate the layer the labels are on and then window the labels.  If you do that in Civil 3D you don’t get the results you are looking for; which we will cover in a later post.  A FASTER alternative in Civil 3D is to simply use the Select Similar command (shown above).

To use, select ONE contour label and choose ‘Select Similar…’ from the right-click menu.  All the contour labels in the drawing will be selected and you can change a variety of settings in the AutoCAD Properties Palette.

Some will say, “…that is all well and good, but I don’t use the right-click menus.  I have my right-click set to repeat the last command.”  My answer to that is you can have both!

In the Options dialog keep both “Double click editing” & “Shortcut menus in drawing area” checked (see below).

Now CLICK, “Right-click Customization…“…

Check “Turn on time-sensitive right-click:“…

and toggle “Repeat Last Command“…

Using this method a right-click will still ‘repeat the last command’ unless you hold down your right-click for an extra 250 milliseconds (adjustable) which will than result in the right-click menu popping up; the best and fastest of both worlds.  🙂