Select polygon components

To perform many types of operations on a polygon mesh you must first select the related polygon components you want to modify.

The following table describes techniques for selecting the various types of polygon components.

To...	Do this
Select polygon vertices	Set the selection type to vertices: Press on the polygon mesh and select Vertex from the context sensitive marking menu that appears. or If the polygon mesh or other component types are already selected you can change the selection type to vertices by pressing F9. Then: Select the dots that appear where the lines intersect on the polygon mesh.
Select polygon edges	Set the selection type to edges: Press on the polygon mesh and select Edge from the context sensitive marking menu that appears. or If the polygon mesh or other component types are already selected you can change the selection type to vertices by pressing F10. Then: Select the lines on the polygon mesh.
Select polygon faces	Set the selection type to faces: Press on a region of the polygon mesh and select Face from the context sensitive marking menu that appears. or If the polygon mesh or other component types are already selected you can change the selection type to vertices by pressing F11. Then: Select the dots in the center of the faces.
Select polygon vertices, edges and faces	Set the selection type to multi: Press the right mouse button on a region of the polygon mesh and select Multi from the context sensitive marking menu that appears. Then: Select components on the polygon mesh. Multi component selection mode will select vertices, edges or faces based on whichever is closest to the mouse cursor.
Select UV texture coordinates for a polygon mesh	Set the selection type to UVs: Press on a region of the polygon mesh and select UV from the context sensitive marking menu that appears. or If the polygon mesh or other component types are already selected you can change the selection type to vertices by pressing F12. Then: Select the dots that appear where the lines intersect on the polygon mesh.

Note

While you can select UVs in the scene view, you must use the UV Texture Editor (Edit UVs > UV Texture Editor) if you want to view the layout of UVs for your polygon mesh as well as perform other UV editing operations.

Note

You can change an existing selection of polygon components to another component type. For example, if you have polygon faces currently selected, you can change the selection so the vertices associated with those faces get selected instead. For more information see Change one type of selection to another in the Basics guide.

NoteWhen you choose a polygon action, Maya automatically converts the selection to the component type expected by polygon action in most cases. If Maya converts from vertices to edges or faces, or edges to faces, the converted selection contains every component that touches the original selection.

For example, if you select an edge and try to delete vertices, Maya automatically selects the two end-vertices of the edge and deletes them. However, if you select those two end-vertices and try to delete edges, Maya selects all edges that touch either of the two vertices and deletes them.