Nesting of Child Prims in a Parent

Idea / Feature request:

Possibility to use NESTED Parent/Child Prims.

If in the current SL edition we link child prims to a parent, we cannot keep a linked child set together. Say I want to build a car, and the steering wheel is built like a unit of 3 linked prims. When I now want to link the steering wheel to the car, the 'unit' "steering wheel" gets lost, and ends up as 3 separate prims. So if I would like to replace the steering wheel, by unlinking the car, I end up with 3 separate childs, instead of 1 steering wheel prim.

If it would be possible to add 'nested' child prims this problem would be solved. The structure of a linked set then could/should behave more like a TREE, rather than the current 'linear' structure.

Maybe we need new functions for this, to be able to discern the level of "nested-ness".

Example: Say we have this structure:

PARENT (link #1) = 
 { ROOTPRIM + 
   CHILD 1 (link #2) = PARENT OF: { CHILD 1a (link #3) + CHILD 1b (link #4)}
   CHILD 2 (link #5) = PARENT OF: { CHILD 2a (link #6) + CHILD 2b (link #7)}
 }

Now suppose we want to edit CHILD 2, because CHILD 2b should be replaced by a new prim. In the current situation this means: CTRL+SHIFT-L (unlink complete set) but now also all childs from CHILD 1 get un-linked too.

Ideally, it would be most convenient if when we unlink the ROOT PARENT PRIM we would get to the next linked levels. So in the example above: ideally UN-linking the PARENT would give us : PARENT, CHILD 1, CHILD 2, where we can go further by UN-linking e.g. CHILD 2 into 2a and 2b by repeating our UNLINK session.

Please consider this idea and give it your thoughts!

Regards, --Tjako Schumann 05:03, 26 September 2007 (PDT)