Selection

A snapshot of the drawing elements currently selected in SketchUp.

Retrieve the selection with model.getSelection(). It captures what the user has selected at a point in time — clicking, dragging, or triple-clicking in the viewport updates the selection. Because it’s a snapshot, call refresh() if the user changes their selection after you fetched it, or use model.observeSelectionMetadata() to be notified automatically whenever the selection changes.

Use model.getSelectionMetadata() if you only need counts and flags (like isCurve or isSingleObject) without downloading the full list of entities.

Example

let model = await SketchUpApi.getActiveModel();
let sel = await model.getSelection();

console.log(sel.drawingElements.length);
// => number of selected entities

console.log(sel.isSingleObject);
// => true if exactly one thing is selected

// Later, after the user makes changes...
let updated = await sel.refresh();

See

Since

SDK 2.14.0 Protocol 1.11.0

Properties

drawingElements

readonly drawingElements: readonly DrawingElement[]

The selected entities, respecting the filter that was passed to getSelection() (if any). Empty array if nothing matches.

isCurve

readonly isCurve: boolean

True if the selection forms a continuous chain of connected edges, like a polyline or circle. Useful for curve-editing operations.

isSingleObject

readonly isSingleObject: boolean

True if exactly one entity is selected — handy for single-object workflows like editing properties or applying materials.

isSurface

readonly isSurface: boolean

True if all selected entities belong to a single continuous surface (one or more coplanar faces). Useful for surface-editing operations.

totalNumberOfElements

readonly totalNumberOfElements: number

Total number of selected entities in SketchUp, ignoring any filter. Use this to detect if the filter excluded some selected items.

Methods

refresh()

refresh(): Promise<Selection>

Re-fetches the selection from SketchUp to pick up any changes the user made since this snapshot was taken. The filter originally passed to getSelection() is preserved — if you filtered for faces only, the refresh will also return only faces.

Returns

Promise<Selection>

Example

let model = await SketchUpApi.getActiveModel();
let sel = await model.getSelection();
console.log(sel.drawingElements.length);

// Later, after the user makes changes...
let updated = await sel.refresh();
console.log(updated.drawingElements.length);