What is the pink cursor filter / funnel in SOLIDWORKS and how to get rid of it? The guide to using SOLIDWORKS Selection Filters with hotkeys

Quick tip: you can get rid of the pink filter / funnel cursor icon by pressing the F6 hotkey to turn off SOLIDWORKS Selection Filters.

The infamous, frustrating pink filter / funnel icon by the cursor – every SOLIDWORKS user has accidentally experienced this at one point or another. While this tool is frustrating when you first encounter it, it is also a powerful, time saving tool for using SOLIDWORKS.

What is the pink cursor filter / funnel in SOLIDWORKS? Meet the Selection Filter tool.

In SOLIDWORKS, the pink filter / funnel icon next to the cursor indicates that the SOLIDWORKS Selection Filter tool is active.

Selection Filter is a useful tool that allows you to only select specific types of items in the graphics area or drawing sheet. This can be a super time saver for selecting only certain types of entities with one quick drag of your mouse.

If this pink icon popped up out of nowhere, then you probably hit F6 by accident, which is the hotkey that activates Selection Filter. To deactivate the tool and get your normal cursor back, just press F6 again.

How to use Selection Filter

To get started using Selection Filter, you can toggle the display of the Selection Filter toolbar by pressing F5 or navigating to View > Toolbars > Selection Filter.

SOLIDWORKS Selection Filter toolbar with labels — *SOLIDWORKS Selection Filter toolbar*

The toolbar contains four buttons that control the overall behavior of the Selection Filter tool, and the rest of the buttons toggle the filter for each type of entity like faces, vertices, edges, center marks, etc..

First, in the Selection Filter toolbar, click on one or more of the filters you would like to use for selecting certain entities on your part.
Then click on the Toggle Selection Filter (or press F6) to activate the Selection Filter. A pink funnel / filter icon appears next to the pointer when the Selection Filter is toggled on.

Now when you drag a selection box with the pointer over some or all of the part, only the specific entities that you have toggled on in the Selection Filter toolbar will be selected.

*Using the edges selection filter on an Apple watch mockup design*

The following four buttons on the toolbar control the behavior of the Selection Filter:

Toggle Selection Filter (or pressing F6)

Turns the selected filters on or off.

Clear All Filters

Clears all selected filters

Select All Filters

Selects all selected filters

Invert Selection

After you have selected over the part, this clears the currently selected entities on the part and selects all the other entities on the part of the same type.

Examples of using Selection Filter

Selection filters can be super useful with both 3D models in the graphics area and on 2D drawing sheets.

Here are some examples of how you can save time with Selection Filters:

Finding the surface area of a part
Hiding all of the planes in a part
Hiding all of the sketches in a part
Mass-deleting annotations in a sketch

How to avoid accidentally triggering Selection Filter

By default, SolidWorks uses the keyboard shortcuts (aka hotkeys) shown below to trigger different Selection Filters:

Edges	E
Faces	X
Vertices	V

If you wish to avoid triggering these Selection Filters in the future, you can reassign the E, X, and V keyboard shortcuts to no longer map to the Selection Filters with the following process:

Navigate to Tools > Customize > Keyboard
Search for “filter”
Delete the shortcut letter next to each command
Click “OK”