By default, a drag selection will select all components under the mouse. This can be a problem when viewing the scene in shaded mode since your selection may include components hidden from your view.

You can use Camera based selection to only select components with a clear line-of-sight to the camera. This ensures that you don’t accidentally select components you can’t see.

To turn on Camera based selection

1. Open the Attribute Editor with any of the transformation tools active.
2. In the Common Selection Options section, turn on Camera based selection under the Drag setting.

Now, if you Drag select objects in your scene, Maya only selects the components unobstructed by other components from the camera’s point of view.