Inspect

The Inspect tools help you select, measure and look at a part without changing it. For a guided tour, see the user guide.

Smart select

Smart select grows one face or edge into what you most likely meant: a whole hole, an edge loop, a flat region or a smooth curved surface. It is most useful on converted meshes, where a hole wall or a flat side is made of many small faces.

Inspect toolbar · MCP simplecad_expand_selection

On a faceted part, double-clicks select a whole hole wall, the edge loop around a raised pad and a flat region of triangles; the dropdown then shows the four modes.

Steps

1. In Select mode, double-click a face or an edge. A hole's wall or rim selects the whole hole, another edge its edge loop, a flat face its flat region, and a curved face its smooth surface.
2. Hold Shift while you double-click to add the result to the selection.
3. To choose the kind yourself, select faces or edges, then pick a mode from the Smart select dropdown in the Inspect toolbar.

Options

Option	What it does
Select hole	Grows a face or rim edge into its whole hole or cylinder wall, analytic or faceted. Not available for a free-form curved face.
Select edge loop	Grows an edge into the loop it lies on, such as a hole's rim, taking the loop of the face turned toward you.
Select flat region	Grows a face into the connected faces on its plane, within 0.5°, such as a flat area of mesh triangles.
Select smooth surface	Grows a face across creases gentler than 30°, such as a faceted fillet or curved wall.

Keys

Key	What it does
Double-click	Grow the face or edge under the pointer, choosing the mode automatically.
Shift + double-click	Add the grown result to the selection.

Notes

• The dropdown modes, also in the face list's right-click menu, grow every selected face or edge at once.
• Hidden faces are left out. Smart select works on CAD faces; raw STL triangles need Make mesh editable first.
• A selected hole can go straight to Delete to close it, or to Measure.
• Only the selection changes; the model does not.

See also: Select · Measure · Delete & heal faces · Make mesh editable

Measure

Measure reads sizes from the model without changing it: a hole's diameter, an edge's length, a face's area, the radius of a curve, and distances and angles between two picks.

Inspect toolbar · Shortcut Z · MCP simplecad_measure

Two parallel faces measure 16 mm apart at 0°, then a third click on a round reads it as a cylinder of diameter 12 mm, radius 6 mm.

Steps

1. Click Measure or press Z. Nothing needs to be selected.
2. Click a vertex, edge, face or hole. A panel lists the measurements, and an orange dimension appears in the view.
3. Click a second element to measure between the two.
4. Click again to start a new measurement, or press Esc to finish.

Options

Option	What it does
Place	Move the pointer to offset the dimension off the part, with extension lines back to the measured points, and click to leave it there.
Clear placed	Remove the placed dimensions.
Copy	Copy the results to the clipboard.
Close	End Measure.

Keys

Key	What it does
Z	Start Measure.
Esc	End Measure. A right-click does the same.

Notes

• One pick: a hole's wall or rim edge gives its diameter, radius, center, axis and depth; a round reads as a cylinder the same way. Faceted holes of converted parts are fitted, and the result says (faceted). A vertex gives its position, an edge its length and XYZ delta, a flat face its area and normal.
• A curved face that is not a cylinder reports how it bends at the click: whether it bulges outward, is hollow or is saddle-shaped, and its tightest and gentlest radius.
• Two picks: two holes give their center spacing and the wall between them; two flat faces their distance when parallel and the angle between them; two points their distance and ΔX ΔY ΔZ. Every pair also shows the minimum distance.
• A third click starts a new measurement. Placed dimensions stay in view while you edit and keep their arrow size as you zoom; they do not change the model.

See also: Smart select · Curvature map

Curvature map

Curvature map colours curved faces by how tightly they bend, from red for tight bends through yellow and green to blue for gentle ones. Use it to find small rounds, uneven fitted surfaces, or where a surface flattens out.

Inspect toolbar

On a soap-bar shaped part, the 1.5 mm top rounds show orange, the 10 mm corner rounds green and the gently curved top blue; a second click hides the map.

Steps

1. Select the objects to map, or select nothing to map every visible object.
2. Click Curvature map. The status bar gives the radii shown as red and as blue.
3. Orbit the view to inspect the colours.
4. Click Curvature map again to hide it.

Notes

• The scale follows the size of the model: red is a radius of 1/200 of the model's diagonal or tighter, blue is half the diagonal or gentler, on a logarithmic scale in between. Flat faces keep their own colour.
• The map is a picture of the moment you turned it on. After editing, click twice: once to hide it and once to show it again.
• It is a temporary overlay; the model and its colours do not change. For the exact radius at a point, click the face with Measure.
• Objects with only flat faces have nothing to map, and the status bar says so.

See also: Measure · Remove rounds

Isolate selection

Isolate selection hides every object except the selected ones, so you can work on one part of a crowded model. Click it again to show everything it hid.

Inspect toolbar

In a small assembly the shaft is isolated and orbited on its own, then Isolate again brings back the other parts.

Steps

1. Select the objects to keep, or any of their faces or edges.
2. Click Isolate selection. Every other CAD object and mesh is hidden.
3. When you are done, click Isolate selection again, with or without a selection, to show the hidden objects.

Notes

• Only visibility changes; nothing in the model changes.
• Restoring shows only the objects Isolate hid. Objects you had hidden before stay hidden.

See also: Select · Smart select