Selecting a component on a breadboard is a fundamental operation when using Virtual Breadboard and there are a number of ways of doing it.
The easiest way to select an individual component is to simply click on it on the breadboard. Move your mouse over the image of the LED8 on the breadboard and click once to select the component.
A number of things happen when you select a component. The first is that the component is surrounded by a selection bounding box. This indicates which component is currently selected. The second thing that happens is the selected component becomes selected into the component preview and its properties become available for in-place editing in the properties editor. Another thing is that component specific editing tools become available such as cut, copy, delete and the rotation tool. These editing tools allow components to be
| cut -deleted from breadboard and placed in the copy buffer for later pasting; |
| copied – copied into the copy buffer for later pasting; |
| deleted – simply removed from the breadboard; and |
| rotated – which allows the orientation of the components to be modified. |
The other way to select a component is to use a bounding box. Bounding Box selection is primarily used for selecting multiple components. It is however a useful technique for component selection if links are getting in the way of a clean component pick. Sometimes it might be hard to select a junction component, for example, if there are several links to it - attempting to select the junction often results in one of the links being selected instead. In this case, drawing a bounding box around the junction will allow it to be selected without interference from the links.
A Bounding Box selection is started by clicking and holding the mouse down on the breadboard. This anchors the start of the bounding box to the location of the mouse click. Dragging the mouse creates a box which will select any component fully contained within the bounding box when the mouse is released.