I have a group of items grouped to an empty. If I select the name of the empty when linking or appending, it loads it, but it does not load the associated items.
Many times, I don’t know what sub-items to load, so I’m trying to figure out how I can do this, without searhing through hundreds of items in the file dialog.
How can I do this?
Hi,
what does “grouped to an empty” mean? Did you create a group? Did you set a parent/child relation?
Exactly. For easy instancing you should use groups, not parent-childs. Select desired objects, Ctrl+G. This will add a group. You can change the name of this group in the F6 popup, or by going to Object tab of one of your objects and renaming it there. Having this group will allow you to instance it inside the blend (Shift+A -> Group), and easily link/append it to another file by browsing the ‘Groups’ in the blend that’s being linked/appended.
Ok, I’m going to read up on that in the manual. Thanks for setting me straight. I was parenting objects. I did not know this was different.
Grouping is a very strong function and it is used more to connect objects into a unite group.
Parenting is more for establishing relationships when moving / animating objects.
A group object will move individual, a parent object will move the children!
Group in Blender is unlike Group in Illustrator fundamentally different !!!