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What is the correct way to apply the scale to an object which has a multi user while maintaining its linked object data properties (e.g. modifiers, materials, vertex groups, etc.)?

In other words: I don't want to make it a single user. Changes made to one object should reflect on others.

Is this even possible?

enter image description here

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    $\begingroup$ Scale in Edit mode. And undo scaling in Object mode. Afaik no way to apply it $\endgroup$
    – Mr Zak
    Commented Jul 28, 2017 at 10:04
  • $\begingroup$ Related answer, only with modifiers instead of scale. $\endgroup$
    – Leander
    Commented Jul 28, 2017 at 10:06
  • $\begingroup$ @MrZak You're absolutely correct that when building a scene you should always start transforming in edit mode to avoid these kind of problems. However when importing scenes from other software this worlfow isn't feasible. $\endgroup$
    – Delagone
    Commented Jul 28, 2017 at 11:04
  • $\begingroup$ @Leander I am aware of this. It's just strange that I'm not able to apply basic transformations regardless of changing modifiers. $\endgroup$
    – Delagone
    Commented Jul 28, 2017 at 11:07

3 Answers 3

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I know you said no single user but your goal is to keep them linked so here's my workaround:

  • unlink only one in object data panel
  • apply the scale to this one
  • link the others to it in the object data panel

It can be a little bit of work in relation to the number of linked objects but it works. I had 25 objects sharing the same data and it took only a few seconds to finish.

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    $\begingroup$ "unlink only one in object data panel ", how? $\endgroup$
    – clankill3r
    Commented Feb 8, 2021 at 22:40
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It is not possible to apply the transformations on an object that shares linked data.

In your case you can parent your object to an empty and use the empty to scale, rotate, translate. You can also constrain the cube meshes to empties.

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  • $\begingroup$ This doesn't change anything to the given problem. You're right about the scale of the object remaining at 1 when parenting. But... the object's modifiers are scaled as well. resulting back to the beginning of the problem. As an example: a Bevel modifier of 0.01 will change to a bevel of 0.1 when scaling the empty 10x. regardless of the scale of the original. $\endgroup$
    – Delagone
    Commented Jul 28, 2017 at 11:13
  • $\begingroup$ Right. How about using a driver to control the bevel based on the scale of the parent? $\endgroup$
    – satishgoda
    Commented Jul 28, 2017 at 12:36
  • $\begingroup$ I guess that might be a suitable workaround in some cases. I don't have any experience with drivers though. Will investigate further. $\endgroup$
    – Delagone
    Commented Jul 28, 2017 at 12:41
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No way to do this in one action, but you can work around with:

  • Select one of the duplicates
  • go to mesh tab and make it a single-user copy by clicking on the number. enter image description here
  • CTRL+A > Apply scale
  • Select all of the duplicates
  • select the applied single-user copy
  • CTRL+L > link object data
  • Deselect the object that you applied scale to
  • ALT+S to reset the scale to 1 on all the duplicates
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  • $\begingroup$ This is a great answer, thank you! Fixed my problem, even though relinking all the objects is a bit annoying. $\endgroup$
    – andrejbroncek
    Commented Feb 22, 2023 at 0:04

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