# 3.1.14: Select Elements Use the **“Select Elements”** component to filter elements based on specific properties. The selected elements can then be used to retrieve results, calculate their mass, surface area, volume, or generate meshes (see the **“Element Query”** component). Fig. 3.1.14.1 shows how this works: the input plugs **“ElemIds”**, **“Colors”**, **“CrosSecs”**, **“Materials”**, **“LenInter”**, and **“ElemTypes”** can be supplied with lists of element identifiers, colors, cross sections, materials, length intervals, and type indexes. The values in each input plug form criteria via **“OR”**. For example, in Fig. 3.1.14.1, the selected elements may be either purple or red. The individual input plugs are connected via **“AND”**: in the image below, the selected element must be named **“Membrane\_D”**, be red or purple, and be either a membrane or shell, and so on. For shells and membranes, the length refers to the diagonal of their axis-aligned bounding box. For 1-D elements, it is simply their length. The element types are indexed starting with zero. Right-click on the component icon and select **“Expand ValueLists”** to make the value-list input appear. ![Fig. 3.1.14.1: Selection of elements via identifiers, colors, cross sections, materials, size and type.](https://2671626451-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-legacy-files/o/assets%2F-MCkDlhlZpqUmakSqOrp%2F-MjnpDL0kVWAzxjNyg7x%2F-MjnvMuPa9Cmg61MWDsx%2Fimage.png?alt=media\&token=cab5ea3f-efc2-48e7-b60a-00f1f478b301) {% file src="" %} {% file src="" %} {% file src="" %} {% file src="" %} {% file src="" %}