Now, with the Lasso, you can get tricky. Say you have a rectangle sitting on top of, or within another object. The lower object (the one in back) has a solid fill. You want to select the top edge of the top rectangle. If you use the Direct Selection Tool (white arrow), as soon as you start to click to drag your marquee, the lower object will move, causing foul words to come from inside you. This could be fixed by first selecting the lower object and locking it (Cmd/Ctrl+2), but after your modifications, you’d have to remember to unlock it. You could also hide the object, or double-click the top rectangle. But all that is complicated. Just hit the Q key to choose the Lasso Tool. Then drag around all the points and paths you want to select. You’ll see that nothing moves, and you’ve gotten just what you wanted.

Another example is when you’ve got an illustration with some sort of starburst (think pointy things, not the lens flare type). Maybe you want the inner points to come closer to the center of the burst, or go closer to the outer ring of points. Use the Lasso to select just the inside points. Then choose the Scale tool, click the mouse in the center of the ring of points and drag approximately 45° to the top or bottom. The points will move together or further apart. You can also use the Rotate, Shear, and other transformations on the selection. It’s pretty neat!

When you have a very complex drawing with many paths and points seemingly on top of each other, you can use the lasso to marquee a few at a high view – say up around 1600X.

So, you use the Lasso Tool for very specific, hard to select groups of paths and points. Yippee Yi Yo!