Hair Prim Attachments

I have a question for any experienced hairmakers out there: I am having trouble developing a process for creating hair where if I need to take a break and return the hair to inventory in the middle, it does not retain any of the settings about its previous location.

Example:
I use my own head as the 'model' to shape the hair against. Stand on same posing stand in same location. Create separate prims and position them around my head where they would be - but without linking or attaching. When finished (or need to take break), I link them, select edit/take. They return to inventory. They have not yet ever been attached.

Is there a way to bring them out to edit again in the same location as before, or at least in a way that will keep them facing in the same direction/same axis rotation? This is a problem when I can't complete an entire project in one sitting. The object almost always reappears rotated and takes considerable effort to put into the right spot again.

Also, once an attachment point has been defined and the objects linked, if I decide to unlink in order to add or delete prims/etc., I face the same problem. Any suggestions for getting around this? Is my method flawed?

Thanks!

is there a particular reason for taking them to inventory at all? (only one I can really think of is if you're working in a public sandbox). Why not leave them where they are? If it's a privacy thing, rez a black cube over it or turn it all transparent temporarily. I always leave a partially done piece exactly where it is, and just take copies into inventory every now and then for backups in case something goes horribly wrong.

When I'm making a multiple piece attachment, I always choose a parent piece early on and make sure I stick with it throughout. So when you link them, select that one last (select all, deselect that one and reselect it, if its easier!) and then the positioning ought to be the same.

Yes, there is

It took two months of building attachments before I thought of this, but now that I have, I want the world to know!

Here it is.... drum roll please...... aaaaaaaaand.....

Link the hair to the posing stand (with the posing stand as the root) - and take that into your inventory.
Later on, rez the hair+stand onto the ground, and stand on it!

Yup you can do dat, too. However, no real need to go to the trouble of linking it. Just select the both and take them. They'll still rez relative to each other

I have seen prim hair with a sphere in the center of it hidden under the hair itself.. why not just attach the sphere to your head and work with it from there?.. This way you have it fitted already and this leaves the pose stand out for you to use for other projects... i dont build with attachments much.. can you link objects while they are attached?

Thank you for all of the ideas. The posing stand idea is brilliant! When I started, I used a ball in the center, but found it was more difficult to position the other prims because I would lose sight of what was the "front/top/bottom/etc" - it's easier with me on the posing stand. I never thought to link the prims to the stand. Positively brilliant.

And yes, I do need to take them because I don't own land, so I will try the things you guys suggested here. Thanks again!

that posing stand idea is great, though what I normally do with attachments is wear them whenever I'm editing them and wear them before I put them in my inventory.

For the root prim, when I'm building something like that, I use a cube with each face colored in the direction it's facing, and tapered 2:1 in the Z axis, so I always know which way that truncated primitive is facing... it's also helpful to keep track when I switch between local and world coordinates.

Now if only I could build stuff that didn't suck...