Lasso

Lasso is the freeform selection tool. You draw a shape on the map and every point inside it becomes the current selection. Use it when the group you want is a region rather than a cluster: an arm of a distribution, a scatter of outliers, half of a dense blob.

Shortcut

q

Available on

Map, Map (Legacy)

Drawing a freeform lasso around a region of the map to select the points inside it.

Where to find it

The Lasso button is the second tool in the tool island, or press

Q anywhere outside a text field. It works the same way on the

default Map and on Map (Legacy).

How to use it

1. Activate Lasso. Click the button or press Q.
2. Press and drag around the points you want. The stroke is drawn as you move; you do not have to close the loop by hand.
3. Release. Every point inside the polygon becomes the current selection, and the Inspector, Reader, Summarizer and plot panels pick it up.

Modifiers

Hold a modifier as you release to retarget the result at the active bag instead of the selection:

• Ctrl adds the lassoed points to the active bag.
• ⇧ removes them from the active bag.Alt does the same on the default Map.

What it does not do

Releasing the lasso does not create a bag. The tool island tooltip still reads “Draw a freeform lasso to create a bag”, but on both maps the release only sets the current selection. Save it from the Bags panel if you want it to persist.

Limits

On the default Map a single lasso commit is capped at 25,000 points. Beyond that the extra points are dropped silently, with no message in the UI, so a lasso thrown around a very large region will quietly under-select. Zoom in and work in pieces when you are near that scale.

Read nextBagsTurn the selection into a named group.