It's a little rough but does work. Pressing f3 while in spaysmode will now display the entire list of placeable objects in a grid of images. If the player uses the mouse to click on an image, this will set the selected object as the active object. 

The OSD is still visible, the game is not paused, the ship can move around from this menu, and there is no way to use your controller,, just the mouse to use the menu (as in the other menus) ,, but,, you can now see the items all at once, and select them without toggling up or down over 100 times in some cases. Also, despite my previous setups to keep it possible to see even the larger objects with the "spawned sprite" system ,, particularly the largest objects were still something that if the player was familiar with them, they might know what they were, but otherwise it was like a closeup of your nose with some of them, even on the big cams. 

I have to figure out the best way to run the menu ,, but at present it is not necessary to pause as there are no controller conflicts, and the spaysmode ship doesn't move without input ,, so I left it as is. If nothing else, the player can place the object while still in the menu to see how big it is, and delete it as well as though not in the menu, so I wonder if there is some value in allowing movement from the menu (it is after all transparent.) ,, it is actually not bad to just play with it up. Perhaps I will just make sure it is in front of the osd instead of behind it, or perhaps just leave it for now.