yes, finally i can get that to work but the commands/results seem really counter-intuitive. if i “select & hide others” you’d think that “unhide polygons” would simply and directly unhide the “others” (which you just hid) without having to re-hide and unhide all the polygons in the object. it would be nice if it worked in a straightforward way like a solo switch in audio. “select & hide others” to solo the element you want to see, and simply “unhide polys” to un-solo. thanks for the response.