Select Similar in Civil 3D

You can right-click on an object in Civil 3D and pick Select Similar to select all the objects in a drawing with shared, or similar, properties.  It’s not obvious, however, there are two different versions of the Select Similar command in Civil 3D.  If you watch the command line closely you will notice that the command issued in Civil 3D when you right-click on an object and pick Select Similar is AecSelectSimilar.  This is different than the AutoCAD command SELECTSIMILAR and there is a difference in how those two commands work.

The AecSelectSimilar command (the one on the right click menu in Civil 3D) does not give you control over any settings.  It only selects objects that exactly match all the properties of the example object selected.  For example, if you wanted to select all of the blocks with the same name, but on different layers, this command will not help.

The AutoCAD SELECTSIMILAR command does have an option for settings where you can choose what properties it considers “similar”.  You can read more detail about the AutoCAD SELECTSIMILAR command in a previous post.

Just remember in Civil 3D you have two Select Similar commands and you have a choice which one you would like to use based on your needs and what you are doing.