HOME / BUILDING / LINKING AND UNLINKING

LINKING

To be able to link two or more prims together, you need to have the correct permissions on them (you need to have modify permission), and they need to not be locked (see the basic prims page for an explanation of locking). For instance, can't just buy an oven and a helicopter then link them together to make a very rapid pizza delivery machine, because the permissions on those objects probably won't allow it. This walkthrough therefore assumes you have several prims that you have created, and that aren't locked.

  1. Go into Edit Mode. You can do this by right-clicking Editing on one of the prims you wish to link, or by hitting Ctrl-3.
  2. With the shift key held down, use your mouse to left-click on each prim you want to link together. As you do this they will highlight in yellow. Make sure you have highlighted all of them.
  3. With them all selected, choose Link from the Tools menu or press Ctrl-L to link them. They will now act as one object.

Note: If you get a message saying they are too far apart to link, this is because there is a link limit based on distance (measured from the prim centers) and relative prim size . This limitation will scale in that larger prims have a greater link distance than smaller ones; the smaller the prims are, the closer they must be in order to be linked.

After linking together, you can continue to add more prims to this new object using the same technique.

UNLINKING

You can unlink an entire object so that all prims go back to being single ones, or you can unlink individual prims from the set.

  1. Let's begin by removing one prim from a linked object. In edit mode, select the object by right-clicking it and choosing Edit (or pressing Ctrl-3 then left clicking it).
  2. On the edit pane you will see a radio button option called Edit Linked Parts. Select that, and then left click on one prim in the set to highlight it.
  3. Choose Unlink from the Tools menu or press Ctrl-shift-L. That single prim will now be independent of the rest. You can now modify that prim, delete it or re-position it as required.
  4. If we now decided to simply unlink the whole set, we can select it and - being sure that Edit Linked Parts is not ticked - choose Unlink (or Ctrl-shift-L) to unlink them all.