Duplicate and wrap items in operators

Two of the commonest edits in the scene tree work on whole branches, not on single rows. Knowing that up front saves a lot of undoing.

Duplicating copies the whole subtree

Right-click an item and choose Duplicate. The copy lands next to the original, under the same parent — and if the item is an operator, its children are copied with it. Duplicate a smooth union of two spheres and you get a second smooth union of two new spheres, not an empty operator you then have to refill.

The submenu offers several copy counts (1, 2, 3, … up to 100). Each copy is a full, independent branch.

Selecting an operator row selects everything under it, which is what you want here: Duplicate acts on the branch you picked, once, rather than once per row in the selection. Duplicating a parent and its child together still gives you one copy, not a copy plus a stray loose child beside it.

Wrapping keeps what you wrapped

Select one or more items and choose Wrap in…, then pick an operator. The new operator takes the place of what you selected, with your selection inside it.

An operator you wrap goes in whole — its own children stay inside it, where they were. Wrapping does not flatten the branch out into a row of siblings.

That matters because an operator with no operands encloses nothing and renders nothing. If a wrap ever leaves a shape invisible, look first at whether its operator still has its children.

Both work on the selection as a whole

The rule behind both commands is the same: they act on the top-most items in your selection. Anything already inside something else you selected comes along as part of it, rather than being acted on a second time in its own right.

See also

• Move, rotate and scale objects — editing an item once you have it.
• Scene organization reference — what each operator does.