trouble cutting and pasting from one element to another

When I try to cut a a piece of a drawing and past it as a new element it takes two or three tries and the I’ll only get the whole drawing. Some times I
get a gray box around the original drawing and everything freezes. I cannot
copy with my mouse I can only control+C which rotates the screen on occasion.

Hi, Karen,
Did you use cutter tool to cut the drawing ?
Or you can just select the piece where you want to cut, and right click it then choose cut drawing object.

I tend to lock all other layers, this makes it easier to make sure you have everything you want selected. It sounds like you don’t have a full selection.