# Selecting tool for Scatter3D

**URL:** <https://community.plotly.com/t/selecting-tool-for-scatter3d/46658>\
**Category:** Dash Python\
**Created:** [October 29, 2020, 9:18pm UTC](https://community.plotly.com/t/selecting-tool-for-scatter3d/46658 "2020-10-29T21:18:08Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![luggie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/0ea827/32.png) [@luggie](https://community.plotly.com/u/luggie)\
**Post date:** [October 29, 2020, 9:18pm UTC](https://community.plotly.com/t/selecting-tool-for-scatter3d/46658/1 "2020-10-29T21:18:08Z")

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Hi,  
I’d like to implement a selection like this ([Selection Events | Python/v3 | Plotly](https://plotly.com/python/v3/selection-events/)) in a scatter\_3d object.  
The conceptual idea would be to draw a rectangle with the mouse (another key pressed would be probably necessary since click is already listened to by clickData and if no point is selected by it, dragging the whole plot is activated) and get all points returned, that are “behind” it in current camera perspective.  
I guess this sounds a big bold for starters but I thought that someone might have an initial idea where and how to start working on it since I’m clueless 😃

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![luggie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/0ea827/32.png) [@luggie](https://community.plotly.com/u/luggie)\
**Post date:** [November 2, 2020, 3:43pm UTC](https://community.plotly.com/t/selecting-tool-for-scatter3d/46658/2 "2020-11-02T15:43:41Z")

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I realized that this been asked before, unanswered:

- [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/63616422/rectangle-tool-cube-tool-point-selection-in-dash-plotly-3d-scatter-plot](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/63616422/rectangle-tool-cube-tool-point-selection-in-dash-plotly-3d-scatter-plot)
- Also related: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/58310199/select-and-delete-data-points-in-plotly-dash-3d-scatter](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/58310199/select-and-delete-data-points-in-plotly-dash-3d-scatter)

However for my application it is somehow sufficient to have the same data shown as `scatter_3d` and as `scatter`, reduced to 2d with something like TSNE. There the needed selection can be made and projected onto the `scatter_3d`. Might be that this idea may help someone.