I’m using a ton of group instances in a current project. When I create a group instance I usually place the real geometry on a unrendered layer, and then begin to add group instances to the rendered scene.
My problem is I am getting overwhelmed by the empties (or whatever you call the lines) that appear in the viewport.
Is there anyway to prevent seeing those all together?
Is there anyway to still keep them, but make the length of the empty lines much smaller?
Properties panel under Display, turn of ‘Releationship Lines’
Rats… I don’t think that is it Richard, read the tool tip a little closer, I think it is refering to those parenting dashed lines.
You can see on this screenshot, the box is unchecked, but the line still remains. I even went to the real geometry object and unchecked it there, but nothing changed.
Any other thoughts on maybe how to do it?
Hey Stan… well what you saying does work… but unfortunately it has to be done on each and every group instance individually. They should really figure out a way to hide them globally… maybe there is?
But unfortunately to choose each of these group instances and adjust the empty size would be quite a job 
import bpy
for o in bpy.context.selected_objects:
o.empty_draw_size = 0.01
Select one empty, select grouped > type. Set pivot point to individual origins and scale.
Edit: forget this 
Copy attributes addon: select one empty, change empty display size, select grouped > type, Ctrl+C > Copy draw options.