Color — select every object that uses the picked material

What it does

Color is a selection tool. It does not paint. The tooltip is: pick a component to select all with the same material. The status is: select by material color. The cursor is an eyedropper.

Click something that has a material. The command clears the selection, then selects every group and component in the whole model that carries that material on itself, or that has a face directly inside it with that material on the front or the back. A parent group is not selected only because a nested group inside it is painted — the nested group is. Loose faces are not added to the selection.

Pick

1. Click Color.
2. Click a face, a group, or a component.
3. On a face, the material is the side you are looking at (front or back, compared with the camera). If the face has none, the tool walks up the pick and takes the material on a parent group or component.
4. The status bar reads: selected N object(s) with the same material.

A click with no material leaves the selection as it was, and there is no message. There is no undo step, because nothing in the model is edited.

Keys

• Click — sample and select the objects that share the material.
• Esc — leave the tool.

There is no VCB. Tab, Ctrl, Shift, Alt, and the arrow keys are not used.

Common mistakes

• A click selects nothing: the click has no material on the face and none on a parent group.
• Expecting paint: the selection changes. Face materials do not.
• You wanted the faces themselves selected: only groups and components are added to the selection.