Way to select overlapping objects

Questions
1

Is there a way to select object A under object B (both objects is on the same layer) ? Current workflow for this: move large object B, then do things with object A then move object B on its old place. I tried to open the objects panel and select the object A there, but if I use arrows keys for moving that object - nothing happening.

2

Right, this situation is not very well supported. Your options are:

  • Temporarily switch the Drawing Order of the object layer to Top Down, which should generally place the smaller object in the middle above the larger object.
  • Or, after selecting the object in the Objects view, use the middle-mouse button to put the focus back on the map view, after which the arrow keys will work for shifting the object around.
  • Or similarly, use the Properties view to edit the x/y coordinates of the selected object.

Ideally the context menu would allow to select objects behind other objects, and once such an object is selected, you should be able to drag it around even when other stuff is on top. So this is something that can definitely be improved.

3

Thanks for your reply!

4

Meet the same problem and found this topic.
Yes, its kind of boring to move already placed objects aside to get to the one behind and then place big one at place again. Especially trees are the problem because of their shadow. As I see, the problem is still there.

I have simple idea how it could be organized even without any menus. Maybe you will like it.

The idea is: some hot key i.e. ctl+alt+mouse click will be cycling through the overlapping objects that are in the mouse position and then let to drag them. Actually when i first meet this problem I start to intuitively try to find such ctrl/alt/shift combinations to get to the object.

5

I’ll definitely be working on a solution to this soon. A hotkey will indeed need to be added, but I think extending the context menu also won’t hurt.

One thing that has improved since my last reply, is that once you’ve selected an object (possibly through the Objects view), you can now hold Alt when you start dragging to make sure you’re moving the already selected objects, instead of dragging whatever you happen to hit.

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