Why do tools enable component selection without switching to component mode?

[Anonymous]

When using the "Paint Skin Weights" tool, I go into "Select" mode to select vertices of what I want to affect, but if I perform a bandbox selection and a joint or selection handle is included, it will abort out of component selection mode and select the joint or selection handle.  I have to go back into Paint Mode, select the mesh and then go back to Select mode to resume selecting vertices.

I presume changing selection order may work, but that would affect animation workflow selection order (prefer to select joints and selection handles over meshes almost always).

Why doesn't it ignore object selection when trying to pick vertices based off of the current tool's mode?

I've seen this happen in other tools too, so know it's more systemic than just the "Paint Skin Weights" tool and have to ask why it persists and how should I work around it?

[Michael_Todd]

There is a selection Priority for Maya nodes and Joints have a higher priority than edges, faces or verts.

You can lower the joint selection Priority or raise the priority of the components by using one of the presets that lowers the joint priority. For instance, The Nurbs selection priority preset drops joint priority to 2 but raises component priority.

Cheers

[Anonymous]

I mentioned changing selection order referring to this feature, but it makes zero sense why when the panel display is in effectively component selection (blue wireframe, purple and yellow vertices) that a joint would even be considered for selection?  It's completely against what the UI is telling me. That's the part I am trying to find out why.

When I press F9 (to go into vertex selection mode) explicitly, I cannot select a joint if my life depended on it without jumping back to object selection mode.  However, if a tool says "select vertices please", why doesn't Maya fall into component mode automatically to provide the same functionality?  Is this a limitation in the API?  If they can switch modes, why does Paint Skin Weights not do that? What is the use-case for having a joint be selectable when you're picking vertices?

Anecdotally, it would be a lot easier to evaluate that priority list quickly if we could see it sorted via priority aside from alphabetically.  I propose users care more about the order of importance than the alphabetical names.

[Michael_Todd]

The Joints are still selectable as it's part of the workflow to right click over a joint whilst in skin weights mode to go straight to that joints weight map for painting.

You could add the skeleton to a display layer and set it to reference if you want to make hide the joints from selection.

The joint list can be sorted hierarchically as well as alphabetically and flat.