Ctrl-z undo selection

[Filipe25232446eelm]

So, we cant undo selections any more. clearly most people do not work with DWG files with lots of overlaped shapes... to create floorplans and siteplans in illustrator, selecting existing shapes is so time consuming and if I press Ctrl-Z all selected shapes stopped being selected and all the selection needs to be done again. Terrible idea to use undo for actions only.

And before anyone comments on the "Select by" options, that only works if the DWGs I am working on, actually have different colours and line thikness, and that is not the case quite often!

[Filipe25232446eelm]

In fact, selecting anything in illustrator is a bit of a nightmare. Area selection and deselect work in a way that only Illustrator uses (adobe trying to be fancy and messing things up). why cant I just draw a rectangle area in the objects that I want to remove from selection using shift or alt? How it works now is, you have 100 shapes selected and want to remove shapes in a given area, I will need to click 1 by 1 to remove them because if I use selection area it will add unwanted shapes to the selection. This is such a couterproductive way to work with selections.

[Bobby Henderson]

When did Illustrator have undo levels for object selections? I don't recall ever seeing anything like that.

What application was used to originally create the DWG files? AutoCAD or something else? It's probably going to be easier to do any complex editing to such artwork in its native environment.

It's definitely a pain in the neck having to work with CAD-based line work in a vector graphics application like Illustrator. If I need to create a colored version of a building elevation from CAD artwork I'll usually have to lock the line work of that elevation on one layer and then use it as a guide to create clean artwork over it on another layer.

It's pointless trying to edit the original CAD line work. The stuff usually imports into a vector graphics application with all the objects "exploded" into many thousands of separate lines. CAD applications typically build objects using only lines and arcs. Some may use "polylines" for complex curves. CAD apps are not geared for using more elegant Bezier-style curves like those in Illustrator. Certain things, such as brick wall patterns, will be drawn using open line segments rather than closed shapes. We usually need a closed shape in order to apply a color fill to it.

[Kurt Gold]

Filipe is probably referring to a behaviour that once was there although it should not have been there according to Anshul's statement in this thread:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/illustrator-discussions/keep-selection-after-undo-ctrl-z/m-p/14960098

Sometimes kind of useful by accident, but basically not intended.