You can quickly select or deselect an object plus all of its descendants.
You can double-click an object to select and deselect that object and all of its descendants.
Double-click an object in a viewport.
Double-click an object icon in the Track View Hierarchy list.
You can customize the quad menu so it displays commands to select children, or ancestors, or both. On the Customize menu, choose Customize User Interface. On the Quads panel, drag Select Ancestor or Select Children from the list of all commands to the quad menu. Then you can easily select children or parent with a right-click.
Enable Select Subtree to select hierarchies in the Select Objects dialog. When Select Subtree is enabled, click the name of an object to select the object and all its descendants.
Once you have selected one or more objects in a hierarchy, you can navigate up and down the hierarchical tree using the PAGE UP and PAGE DOWN keys.
PAGE UP deselects the object and selects the objectÆs parent.
PAGE DOWN deselects the object and selects all of its children.
These navigation commands are particularly useful when setting joint parameters for inverse kinematics.