Replace meshes with new nodes

Use this workflow to replace existing meshes in the scene with new nodes that are instantiated from an ItemTemplate—reusing the position (and optionally the size) of the items they replace. This is useful for swapping imported geometries for parametric, instantiable items while preserving the original layout.

Replacement is driven from:

• The Add Nodes panel using the In place of selected position option, and is finalized from the Scene Explorer with the Reimport button. See the Reimport section in Scene Explorer.

  or

• By reimporting the proper model through the Import panel. For additional information, see Import CAD content.

Before you begin

The items you want to replace must be FTMesh nodes or FTNodeBaseMovable nodes descendants, such as Item nodes.

The full workflow involves the application of Import Skip import action on the Meshes replaces, therefore it is fully supported only for models that supporting Skip import action. For more information, see Import actions for MWX Soup.

For models that do not support Skip import action, the workflow can still be used to position and size new nodes in correspondence with selected meshes, but it will be not possible to hide the replaced geometries by leveraging the Skip import action.

Replace meshes workflow

1. In the 3D View or in the Scene Explorer, select the meshes you want to replace. You can select a single mesh or multiple meshes for a batch replacement.

2. On the Nodes Explorer, select the Add button to open the Create Item From Template dialog.

3. Select the ItemTemplate to use as the replacement.

4. Set Position to in place of selected. This option is enabled only when one or more eligible meshes are selected.

5. (Optional) Enable Scale to make each new ItemTemplate scale to match the size of the entity it replaces. When disabled, templates take only the position of the replaced items.

6. (Optional) Enable Mark selected for import skip to flag the replaced entities to be skipped on the next import.

7. Select Add or Add & Close. Each new ItemTemplate is created overlying the mesh it replaces. When replacing multiple meshes, each template overlaps one selected entity, preserving the original layout.

8. In the Scene Explorer, select the Reimport button on the affected model to apply the pending import-skip operations. For more information, see Use Scene Explorer.

9. When the reimport is complete, all meshes marked for import skip will be skipped from the model, effectively replacing them with the new nodes added during the process.

Positioning and scaling

• The In place of selected position option automatically positions each created node by overlapping the position of a replaced mesh.

• When Scale is enabled, the newly created node is resized to match the bounding box of the replaced entity (by applying a best effort strategy).

• Bounding boxes are computed over the whole geometry hierarchy, so multi-part objects are placed and sized correctly.

Selection behavior

• Hierarchy-aware selection: Items that share a hierarchy are grouped by their highest-level node, so a multi-part object is treated as a single replacement target.

• Smart candidates: Root nodes and items without a valid bounding box are excluded as replacement targets.

• Automatic labels: When replacing multiple items, labels are automatically generated from the names of the selected meshes and proposed in the Multiple names field, the user can keep these labels as they are, or edit them.

• Fixed nodes to add amount: When replacing multiple items, the number of items specified in the multiple dropdown list is forced to match the number of selected meshes (after hierarchy-aware selection).

Apply the replacement (Reimport)

Note: Marking meshes for import skip only flags them; the replacement is completed when you reimport the model.

• The Reimport button appears in the Scene Explorer in correspondence of the model root node (for each model that was imported through the Import panel. See Import CAD content.

• Reimport runs silently, reusing the persisted importer settings.

When the reimport is complete, all meshes marked for import skip will be skipped from the model, effectively replacing them with the new nodes added during the process.

Note: Pending import operations are kept in memory until you reimport. While a model has pending operations, the Scene Explorer panel caption shows a modified indicator (*). If you close the editor or the application while import operations are still pending, a confirmation prompt warns you that the pending operations will be discarded if you do not reimport first.