Extracting 2nd level components to 1st level

Aris

Hello,

many times I find myself making an array of components, and then wanting to extract a subcomponent but keep all the instances which reside within each of the 1st level instances.
E.g. you make an array of 7 columns (1st level components) within each of whom you have a head subcomponent, If you extract one head from one column and paste in place you only have 1 instance of it. What I want to do is have the 7 column components, and on the same -hierarchical- level, the seven heads.

If someone has any idea how to do this, it would be very helpful.

slbaumgartner

I might not understand what you want, but try this: select all of the initial first level components and then right-click->explode. That should result in all of the nested components being moved out to whatever context contained the original first level components.

Aris

No, the point is that you want to keep the initial components interlinked so as to keep working on them.What I want is to unlink the "children-components" from their perspective "parent components
while keeping them in place

pbacot

How about select components, cut, exit parent component and "Paste in place". If these components are inside multiple instances of parents components, you have "Copy" in each parent component and then paste in place in "first level". Then remove the component from the parent after you've pasted all the instances you want. Wonder if a plugin can do this at once. I have to do this sometimes.

Wo3Dan

@aris said:

No, the point is that you want to keep the initial components interlinked so as to keep working on them.What I want is to unlink the "children-components" from their perspective "parent components
while keeping them in place

If it's about one parent component with a child component, 'Cut' and 'Pasted in Place' or the 'Outliner' would suffice. But to get the child out of all parent instances and keep them all in place you also need the 'Component' browser and its option to replace a selection of components by another component.

Copy the parent =(A with child C) to the side.
Make it unique =(B with child C) > Get C out of parent B's environment > Componentize (B) + (C) into component D =((B)+(C))
Select all instances (A with child C) and via the 'Component' browser replace the selected components (A with child C) by component (D) > then explode (D) to get all instances (A) with all the respective instances (C) in place.

It's quite fast, even with hundreds of instances (A with child C)