Quick Element Selection — for V7 and V8

You probably know that if you drag the element selection tool, you can select any element that is completely inside the selection area (shown as a dashed line below).

But, what you may not know is that by holding down the <Shift> key while dragging the selection pointer, you can select the elements inside the selection area and elements that merely cross it. This is very helpful for quickly selecting elements whose endpoints intersect an element that you do not want included in the selection set (in this example, this element is the green box shown below).

By holding down <Ctrl> and <Shift> while dragging the element selection tool over the elements you want to select, you can quickly include elements that are completely inside the selection area and elements that merely overlap the selection area. It beats <Ctrl> clicking on each element!