Linking Object

Hiya all
i have a big house and i unlinked it to modify it and now i cant seem to reach every single piece to relink so i was wondering does anyone know if there is an easier way to select a big group of objects and link them and if so how
Nat

Please Disregard this question I kinda figured it out

Zoom the camera out to a position where you can see the whole house. Make sure the edit window is open. Go Tools -> Select Only My Objects. Now click on the ground well otside one corner of the house and drag the mouse to draw a selection box around the whole thing. Swing the camera around to make sure you haven't selected any other objects of yours that you don't want linked. If there are any extras selected, deslect them by shift clicking. If you missed anything, either start over from a better camera angle and a bigger selection box, or shift click the unselected objects to add them to the selection. Now pick whichever object you want to be the root prim, deselect it, and then reselect it. Press ctrl L to link.

Keep in mind this will only work if the house is small enough to be one linkset. If it's too big, all you can do is link it in sections. Also, decide if it's even worth it to link at all. Houses are stationary. There's really no need to link them.

good answer Chosen Few. I could have done with that the other day, instead I went searching through every prim in the building to find the one which [the to-be owner] had copied. This is one of those tips which, once you know, you'd wonder how you did without.

This worked for me to. It was real simple the way you explained it. Even though I did it and it worked, I have one question. When you say "select it then deselect it" I just left clicked twice on the object I wanted to be the root prim but it didn't seem like anything happened. Did I do that part right?

PS
How do you unlink the objects?

Thanks.

Click any part of the linked object and then click Tools->Unlink.

The shift-click twice may be hard to notice as the yellow halo surrounding will disappear when it is unselected and reappear when it is re-selected. If you are zoomed our really far, it will be especially hard to notice sometimes if you have clicked the right prim or not. So, I usually zoom in a little when resetting root prims.

So to select the root prim it's shift+left click?

How come it worked for me just left clicking on the root prim twice?

When linking a set of prims, the last prim that was selected will become the root prim. So left clicking it twice does make it the last prim selected.

If you have already linked the whole thing, and the root prim isnt the one you want, theres an easy solution. Just select the linked bunch and unlink them. All the separate prims would still be selected with the yellow halo around them. Now just click the intended root prim twice and relink them again.

Just a tip on linked objects over pieces of land. The location of an object is centered on the root prim, and prim usage is calculated from there. So technically, you can span prims across land you don't own simply by locating the root prim in your land and the rest overhangs over some other land. I won't go into how or when you would use this or whether its acceptable behaviour. It's just nice to know.

shift+left click adds a prim to your current selection, or removes it if it was already added.
so if you drag a selection box around a whole lot of prims, and then realise that you missed one, you can shift-click it into the selection.

the reason this is also used for setting root-prims is this: you drag around a whole lot of prims - they are all now selected, but which one is the root? no problem - choose which prim you want to be root and shift-click it - this removes it from the selection - now shift-click it a second time, which adds it back to the selection - but now it is the prim that was added last - making it the root.

But if you want to put a copy in your inventory for safekeeping, it's much handier if you link the house together so it goes in as just one object! That way, if you do something catastrophic and accidentally delete part or all of your house, you can just unpack another copy.

something interesting i found out is you can select multiple prim/objects and drag them to your inventory and they stay together as one object linked or not.

and if you make sure that you are in edit mode before rezzing them in again, they will all automatically be selected - ready to move, link or delete again.

The picking up of unlinked prims is bloomin' useful when you have a large building to shift. I don't particularly trust it though, so I always take a copy and not the original

So who oh who oh WHO thought it was a good idea to have 'select only my objects' deselected as default? I can see occasions where you would want to select others' objects, but not nearly as many as you wouldn't. And I've *never* needed someone elses' building in the distance to be part of my selection And it seems to reset itself back to 'off' on a whim.

Drives me nuts.

That's a darned good question, a better one is... is there a vote on fixing it already?