How to duplicate an object?
Sylva1n
Posts: 0
Hello,
it might be obvious but I can't figure out how to copy/paste an object.
For example, I create a cube primitive.
How to easily copy an paste it.
Of course I've tried CTRL-C, CTRL-V but nothing happens.
Why?
thanks,
Sylvain
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2026 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
As far as I know there is no way to do this. I'm not sure why this is but I'm sure there is some technical aspect to the software that makes this hard to implement. Does seem rather strange considering just about every other program in the history of computer software has the function. Actually I think "strange" is a massive understatment, but it just seems to be taken for granted that Studio doesn't have a copy/past function. What you can do is save a scene and then go to "File" > "Merge" to load the same scene as many times as you like.
jimzombie is correct with using Save as a Scene or Scene Subset and Merge. But if you want exactly the same object, size and textures then DS4.5 now has Instancing, Single and Multi. Found under the Create menu. You will have to place the instances where you want them manually.
Ah, I'd forgot about the feature and hadn't tried it out yet (thanks :) ). Not a bad feature - not perfect but not bad. I like how you can choose how many of the same instance to create (just tried it). I'm guessing in a lot of cases the merge will still be preferable.
Now you can edit/duplicate node to create a copy
Never a scientific question :-) The UI is extremely overloaded because of the "Panes" interface (did I spell that correctly?) there are multiple things on display and active that can respond to "copy", or, for example "left" or "right". When you did ^C it probably copied something and when you did ^V it probably pasted it somewhere (or tried to) and it was not what you were expecting.
IRC you can change the bindings to perform specific actions; i.e. you can change what a keyboard shortcut does. Very tempting for me ATM; I want left-cursor to move the timeline one frame left and right-cursor one frame right, but then think about this: In fact I don't use keyboard shortcuts in DAZ with the sole exception of ^S (which I do very very frequently) and (arguably) CR (i.e. the Return key) and Tab when keyboard focus is explicit (i.e. I've selected text), sometimes I use ^Left and ^Right to range select in a text field... oops.
This isn't accurate.
Studio does not support creating a copy of an item in the viewport via copy/paste(CTRL+C/CTRL+V)
By default CTRL+C is tied to "Copy Selected Item(s)". and CTRL+V is tied to "Paste to selected Item(s)"
Other than the usual text editing, they don't do anything to anything outiside the viewpor and parameters panes/tabs.
While the Copy function does copy the entire figure, the paste fuction only applies the XYZ translations and rotations.
Pose,shape and surface settings do not get pasted with this shortcut. For those, you have ot use Paste Pose to selected item(s), Paste Shape to selected item(s), Paste to selected surfaces.
While you can change any keybinding(Window>Workspace>Customize, or F3) i'd recommend against changing the arrow keys, as the new keybinding will override the normal function of them.
I'd instead recommend the period and comma keys which, on a 101, have the greater and less than symbols on them on english keyboards for eaiser reference.
the logical key for duplicate node would be D but that's tied to Drop to floor
however I just remember the Excel us of ctrl " (ditto mark) to duplicate cell above
I"m going to try assigning ctrl ditto to open duplicat'e
Now I just have to remember how to mod the interface.
ended up with Ctrl' but it works for at least single nodes
so i went in and applied ctrl shift ' for the duplicate nodes and it worked
But I said Well Duh and went back and wiped out the short cut for duplicate node and applied the short cut ctrl ' to duplicate nodes and it will duplicate a multiple node object and a single node object.
Makes you wonder why it was set up as two different commands?
To answer your question, Duplicate Node(s) only duplicates the scene selected item(s), Duplicate Node Hierarchies, on the other hand, duplicates the base selected item, and anything in that hierarchy.
For instance, if you have a G8F in a lab coat, using Duplicated node(s), will only duplicate the G8F and not the lab coat. Or, if you select a Group node, only the group node will be copied, and not anything in it.
If you use Duplicate Node Hierarchies instead, a copy of the G8f, with the lab coat, will be created, and the items under the Group node will be copied.
For my short cuts, ALT+D for Nodes only, and CTRL+SHFT+D for Hierarchies.