how to select part of a house wall to edit?

I want to put an opening in a wall as a new doorway or at the least to make a doorway phantom and pass through it. I have a small free house that is copiable and modifiable but cannot find any selection tool to select just an area to change. The nearest I came is making the whole house phantom but thats not really what i want. Sorry i am very new and you may have lost patience with such requests!

Hi Tasha

When you have selected and are editing it, you'll see that most of the house is highlighted in blue lines showing the prims your house is made from. Btw, there will also be a set of yellow lines and that will be your root prim. Ignore that for now.

On the lhs of the edit box are a series of checkboxes, the lowest one saying "edit linked parts". Tick that and then select the part you want to work on.

However, afaik, an object cannot have a mix of prims being phantom or not. So you will need to select your door the way I have just detailed and have just it being edited. You can then go to the tools menu and press unlink. The door being edited will now turn yellow because it is now its own root prim. You may want to close and open the edit box on the door so you not affecting anything else and then you can go to "more", click on the "objects" tab and click on the phantom checkbox.

hth
Ed

Hi Ed
Thnx so much for your reply - I got as far as the checking of the linked parts box but i'm ashamed to say that i dont then know how to select my opening area - ive right and left clicked with and without shift, alt keys etc but i cant seem to select an area as you suggest - sorry for my lack of skills...Tasha

Once you have edit linked parts selected (while editing the house), make sure not to drop out of edit mode. The next prim you left-click on, will be selected on its own.

If that isn't happening, then Something Is Wrong. Given the state of SL the past couple of evenings I could well believe you were suffering from bad weather.

Thanks Ace I've followed this but my next left click seems to change nothing and then when I uncheck the linked parts box nothing new turns yellow as per Ed's post - I think I'll wait and try it all again tomorrow in case it's the server having issues - do appreciate the help, thnx, Tasha.

I think what Tasha is trying to do is edit a wall to put a hole into in (in the shape of a door)

If I am correct in my assumption Tasha, I regret to inform you that what you want to do is not possible in SL.
The closest you can come to putting a doorway in that wall is a hole right in the center. (use the hollow command after ticking "edit linked parts" and selecting that one prim)

The only other way around that might be to make that individual wall "phantom" and then change the texture of the wall to one that has a door texture on it. You will then be able to walk though the entire wall even where the door isn't.

sorry if this isn't what you want to hear.

Thanks Markubis you are quite correct that is what i hoped to do - thanks for pointing out what is in the realm of the possible thereby saving me time and frustration. I'll try to just get the phantom walkthru but i still havn't been able to just select a single prim to edit yet! - I'll keep tryin' Tasha

What happens when you tick the "edit linked parts" box and then try clicking on a part of your house?
Does anything change? Does the edit box go grey? Are you looking directly at the wall you want to edit or are you trying to click on it through another prim?

update - i found the problem - the house wall i was trying to isolate was in fact a single prim used for the entire house walls! hence i could not isolate one wall...i have moved on but thanks to your advice here and messing around with the edit i now know an awful lot than i did thanks again to all, Tasha

Hee!

I use the alt-camera a lot, and zoom out often to check that I have selected what I thought I selected. That's just a general tip, but it might have shown more clearly that a much larger hollow prim was selected.

Thanks Ace - thats a good tip and i find im using that more now - in fact at the time of my first post this probably wouldnt have helped as i didnt even know that a single prim cannot be split - but hey i'm learning thnx to the patience and goodwill of the list..