select specific face by its index

Question

How do I select a specific face within a mesh knowing its face index or vertex? I tried without success:

bpy.data.meshes.polygons[2].select=True #where the face index=2

Answer 1

The line below is invalid.

bpy.data.meshes.polygons[2].select = True

bpy.data.meshes is a collection of all meshes in this .blend file, it doesn't have an attribute .polygons. You are close though, you need to reference a specific mesh either via

mesh = bpy.data.objects['some_object_name'].data
# or
mesh = bpy.data.meshes['some_mesh_name']

Important to note here that Objects are not the same as Meshes

• An Object can hold a reference to a Mesh. (or Curves, or other Types)
• A Mesh only holds references to the objects that use it. (Actually, I think it only holds the count of objects that reference it.. not their names: maybe someone can correct me?)

In Object Mode

One way to select by face index is, go to Object Mode first then do

obj = bpy.context.active_object
obj.data.polygons[2].select = True

When you go back to Edit Mode you'll see the face is selected.

In Edit Mode

If you wanted to do that in Edit Mode, this might be unintuitive at first, but it involves a little more code. Blender comes with a useful collection of templates for mesh editing. The relevant template for this question can be found in Text Editor > Templates > Python > Bmesh Simple Edit Mode.

Below is a slight modification to that template, copy it to the Text Editor and press Run.

import bpy
import bmesh

obj = bpy.context.edit_object
me = obj.data
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)

# notice in Bmesh polygons are called faces
bm.faces[4].select = True  # select index 4

# Show the updates in the viewport
bmesh.update_edit_mesh(me, True)

for 3.0

import bpy
import bmesh

obj = bpy.context.edit_object
me = obj.data
bm = bmesh.from_edit_mesh(me)

# notice in Bmesh polygons are called faces
bm.faces[4].select = True  # select index 4

# Show the updates in the viewport
bmesh.update_edit_mesh(me)