Introduction

When working on dense designs, or on designs where you have items that 'overlap' each other on different layers, it can be difficult to select the right item.

Technique

To help with this, you can use the 'Select Next' option (available on the right-mouse 'context' menu) to spin through all the items at the cursor position or the equivalent hot key <N>.  his function cycles through all items within picking distance of the cursor..

For example, if you have two track segments, one on the top and the other on the bottom, that run along the same path, select the first segment by simply clicking. The segment becomes selected (highlighted). Now right-click and choose 'Select Next' (or the appropriate shortcut key).  The program ignores the item already selected, and instead selects the second track segment, the one on the other side of the board.

Select From List

You can also use the Select From List feature by clicking with the <Alt> key held down, when you will then see a popup menu of all the items under the cursor, allowing you quickly choose the desired item from the list without having to spin through them all one by one.  This is more useful in very congested areas of the board.