Permissions, defaults, and link distance

I built a couple of houses for myself not paying any attention to permissions. A few people, strangers even, have wanted a copy of one of them. Now I'm faced with the problem of changing all the perms.

The default perms when you first create a prim seems to be transfer only. I want my house to be Mod/Copy/No Transfer. It's 111 prims.

I've tried to select the whole thing unlinked and it wont let me change it all at once. I've tried selecting small portions and I can change it in very small segments, but not more than a handful of prims. I've checked every script and texture and they are all set to Mod /copy or to full perms.

I've read a couple of stickies above about permissions, but I still have questions.

1. Can you change the default way a prim is created to make them all Mod/Copy to begin with so I won't have to worry about this in the future?

2. Am I unable to select more than a few prims at a time to change the perms based on distance, as in you can't link prims too far apart either? Should I have linked them first?

3. How do you ever build anything in less than a couple of years if you have to put up with this tedious perm thing - along with people rezzing giant castles in sandboxes at 7:00 am that overlap your build while you are trying to work on it?

I must be doing something wrong. It can't be this hard.

1. Don't think there's a way to change the default perms.

2. Link them, then you can change the perms on a whole object - assuming there's no scripts/textures with limited perms.

3. See 2 - then the perms thing isn't so tedious .

Three possible causes for that:

One is it might just be slow to respond. When you have a lot of objects selected, take a look at your ping. It may have gone up dramatically. If it says something like 20000 msec, then you'll have to wait at least a full 20 seconds to see what happens after you click on a checkbox. Don't assume it's not working without waiting a good long time. And be aware that even if a checkbox looks grayed out, that doesn't mean you can't check/uncheck it. It just means either the selection has mixed perms, or the system hasn't yet figured out what perms it's got.

Another is there might be something in the contents of one object or a texture applied to one surface that has more restrictive permissions. If that's the case, you won't be able to change the whole thing at once. You'll need to find the problem object, and replace/remove its contents and/or texture(s).

The third reason SL might just be acting wonky. I had to package two full sim builds for a client over the past couple weeks. It was a nightmare. One sim went relatively smoothly, but the other ended up taking almost 5 times the amount of hours I'd estimated for the job. Certain objects just refused to cooperate. I'd go through them prim by prim, make sure everything was how it was supposed to be in terms of permissions and contents, and then as soon as I'd take those objects into inventory or select a large amount of them, the perms would show as no-transfer. It was maddening.

I managed to fix a few of the linksets by unlinking them, and then linking the prims to another non-problematic prim. For others, I simply had to leave certain prims out. End result, I under-billed by a factor of five, and the client's package is missing about 5% of the prims that were in the build. Not cool.




No, but if you change the permissions on a single "starter prim", and then construct your build by shift-dragging copies instead of continually rezzing new prims, the whole thing will end up with the same permissions as that first prim.



Distance is not a factor. However, it would certainly be easier if you link the prims first. That way, the system only has to change the perms on a small handful of objects, or maybe even just one object if you can link up the whole thing, rather than on hundreds of individual prims.



See above. The shift-drag thing is what I usually do. It's a lot quicker than rezzing brand new prims, even if permissions were not a concern.

Those two sims I mentioned that needed to be packaged were a notable exception, which never should have been built with the permissions they'd had on them. I tried to explain that to the company before anything was built, but they chose not to listen to me. Needless to say, after this I told them I would be multiplying my upper estimate ranges by a factor of 5 for all our future dealings.



Get your own land. Stay out of sandboxes. There's no free lunch unless you want rotten food. I know that's probably not the answer you wanted, but it's the only honest one there is.

1. Can you change the default way a prim is created to make them all Mod/Copy to begin with so I won't have to worry about this in the future?

Unfortunately, no.

2. Am I unable to s elect more than a few prims at a time to change the perms based on distance, as in you can't link prims too far apart either? Should I have linked them first?

You should be able to choose as many prims and linksets as you wish, and change the perms on all at once, provided you have full-perms on them yourself. I have changed perms on 5000+ prims at once, consisting of hundreds of linksets and individual prims. BUT, the more prims and linksets you choose at once, the longer it takes to correctly display your current permissions, so you can make the change. It has to check each individual item.

If you've linked things together in reasonable assemblies first, it is MUCH faster for setting permissions.

Sometimes, SL glitches permissions, and a prim YOU created suddenly won't link or allow mod or allow copy. Locate these by process of elimination, drag copy if you can, and delete the original bad prim, or delete and replace the bad prim.

3. How do you ever build anything in less than a couple of years if you have to put up with this tedious perm thing - along with people rezzing giant castles in sandboxes at 7:00 am that overlap your build while you are trying to work on it?

First, avoid busy public sandboxes. They are lag hell, and this contributes to the delays mentioned above. If you have no better choice to build in, make a platform, send it to 3000 M or so above the sandbox, and build there, away from most of the newbie builders and griefers. Better bet, buy or rent your own land to build on.

Second, as you build, make linksets that build assemblies for the structure, like one linkset for the roof, one for the East half of the ground floor and second floor, and one for the West half of the ground floor and second floor, separate parts for phantom sculpty stairs and unlinked doors... Link pieces as you go. Duplicate and re-use similar assemblies. Make the West end of your roof, drag copy it, rotate 180 degrees, and position it for the East half. Make a wall with window assembly, and use it in several places. You can tweak assemblies as you go to make this one wider than that one, etc, but skip the redundant work by duplicating where you can.

I set permissions on linksets after it is built, and on scripts as I place them in objects or linksets. I only set perms on individual prins where they must remain as separate parts, like an unlinked scripted door, or a linkset that has to respond to its own touch commands.

Cool Viewer has an option to change the permissions for everything in a linked build, might be a faster and easier way around it.

All great suggestions. Thanks.

Unfortunately my land is near the upper limit of my prim allotment and more land should not be in my budget at present..

It's starting to look like I wasn't giving it enough time to change, so I will start again with that in mind, linking what needs to be linked first and also trying it in the stratosphere.