Collection Utilities

by Duarte Ramos in Addons

Why do some names still get disambiguation numbers even though I have the Strip option active?
The Strip option tries to remove the numbering from name, but if this results in datablocks with the same name Blender will add them again automatically to prevent collisions. Like say you are copying names from materials, and you have selected multiple objects with the same material. This would result in different objects ending up with the same name like 'Oak Wood', so unless there is something else distinguishing their names (like say using some concatenation method) Blender prevents ambiguous names automatically.

What is the difference between Set Collection Instance Offset from the menu and the Properties Window?

Setting Collection Instance Offset from the menu is the main full featured operator.
From the properties window is a courtesy subset of functionality added for convenience. It only works for a single object at a time, and doesn't allow per-axis discrete control, or using the cursor simultaneously.
It can still save some steps of placing the cursor at an object before setting offset.
Create Collection created lots of undesirable collections
Collections for instancing may contain many objects, since they are often comprised of a multitude of "parts" which combined form the complete desired "assembly" to be instanced.

Since a collection is created for each separate object that is selected and centers are automatically set from coordinates of selected objects, it is a good practice to only select one object per desired instancing collection.

This object would ideally be the "main body" or "parent" representing the instance. Having all components selected would lead to undesirable parasitic collections being created for each individual part, and risk Instance Offset centers being misplaced from secondary elements.

But the whole point of instances is having multiple objects anyway, this would defeat the hole purpose. How would I include several objects in said collection then?

Ideally these secondary objects would be parented to this "main body" of the collection, and left unselected for the addon to deal with automatically.

Behavior is controlled by the Child parameter, as explained in the documentation, children object can automatically be either linked, appended, or ignored. You can also manually link them later with Ctrl + L Make Links > Collections.

If you already have a parent/child hierarchy correctly setup there is also a Parents option that allows the addon to sift through all selected objects and only create collections for the top parents in the relationship, while still assigning all childs to the respective parent collection.
Where can I find the Duplicate Collection Hierarchy operator?

Duplicate Collection Hierarchy operator can be accessed from the collection context menu by right-clicking any collection other than a Scene Collection in the Outliner.

What is the different between Duplicate Collection Hierarchy operator and other exsting collection duplication operators?

Duplicate Collection Hierarchy operator only duplicates the collection hierarchy and its objects. That means for every sub collection of the right-clicked collection a new collection is created, and its objects are linked only.
That means no new objects are created, the existing ones are linked to the new collections while simultaneously being kept in any original ones.
If you notice with existing operators new objects are created, notice the ".001" sufix.
With this operator the objects are the same notice no suffixes were added.
The objects are still the same as the original collection, if you move them they move in both collections, and no new objects were added to your scene.


With this operator the objects are the same notice no suffixes were added.

The objects are still the same as the original collection, if you move them they move in both collections, and no new objects were added to your scene.

What does the Index parameter do in Transfer Names?

An object may be placed inside several collections simultaneously, when copying to/from collections Blender may pick the wrong one by default. Since these are not saved in any particular order the one picked may seem arbitrary to you. Cycling through the Index will allow you to pick which one to copy the name to. These are pre-sorted alphabetically for more predictable results.


Duarte Ramos

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Published over 4 years ago
Blender Version 4.2, 4.1, 4.0, 3.6, 3.5, 3.4, 3.3, 3.2, 3.1, 3.0, 2.93, 2.92, 2.91, 2.9, 2.83, 2.82, 2.81
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Tags: hierarchy, instance, organize, collections, offset, batch, copy, name, organization, transfer, management, collection, spring24