I come from SketchUp where you can turn any object into a Component. That’s the Blender equivalent to a linked duplicate - anything you do with the component, will affect other instances/copies of that component everywhere in your file.
As you can see there is a separate Components panel in SketchUp, which contains a list of all components in your current SKP file. There’s no external folder for this, everything is contained locally.
To get another instance of a desired component into my scene, I can simply drag-and-drop from this list into my SketchUp viewport. Alternatively I can just Ctrl+C a component directly in the viewport, and it will just create another instance of it. For reference there’s no Shift+D / Alt+D difference in SketchUp. There’s only Ctrl+C to copy an object.
Is there a way to have a similar workflow in Blender? I need to see a list of all my linked duplicates. I don’t want to “hunt” my scene for a specific object to press Alt+D. In complex scenes it becomes a hassle.
As I don’t want to set up an external folder for instances (because the file will be moved around between PCs) I was urged by Claude to use Asset Browser.
- Right click on an object in Outliner > Mark as Asset.
- Drag from a corner to show Asset Browser panel.
- Change view to Current File.
- You’ll se a list of your linked instance objects. Drag and drop into your scene and you’ll have created another instance of a linked duplicate.
However this instruction is just not right. When I drag and drop I don’t get a linked duplicate - it’s just a regular/unique copy of my object.
