Update parent and pivot of multiple children

Question

So I have multiple cubes to which I try to add empties as children. These empties copy/instantiate other geometry. As I try to duplicate and reparent the empties I encountered a strange behavior. My steps are:

1. Select all children
2. Shift+D
3. Escape (to keep the relative position)
4. Shift-Click the new parent to select it too
5. Object Context Menu\Parent\Object

This does not update the position of the children.

What does update the position is this:

1. Select all children
2. Shift+D
3. Escape (to keep the relative position)
4. Under Properties\Object Context\Relations change the parent to the new parent
5. Repeat for every child

Now the second approach works but is very tedious, that's why i tried the first method. I also made a video of me trying both methods: https://youtu.be/jdKWM_cLef4

Any advice would be appreciated. Maybe even an explanation why the results of both methods differ.

Answer 1

Possibly, when parenting, what you're looking for is CtrlP > Object (Without Inverse), or, after parenting , with the children selected, Object menu > Clear > Origin. It is odd, IMO, that the Object menu > Parent item doesn't offer the first of these options.

The manual advertises (as in 2.79) the keyboard shortcuts CtrlShiftP for parenting this way, and AltO for clearing the origin. However, in my build, these shortcuts seem to have been removed. Having checked for conflicts, I've put them back without appearing to do any harm.