Unlinking items

[Marx Lane]

How do you unlink specific individual items from several linked items?  I purchased an item made up of several linked parts.  Later I linked a few other items to it.  Now I want to remove the ones I linked, but not disturb the original linking.  How can I do that?

[Alwin Alcott]

edit

select linked parts

click part

unlink

done

 

[Rolig Loon]

Alwin has the unlinking process in a nutshell.  That will leave you with all of the remaining links in the original object still linked.  However, .....

If you have a script anywhere in the object that has been refering to links by number, there is an extremely good chance that it will now be messed up.  Suppose that you had 12 links in the original and that you removed links 5 and 8.  You now have 10 links left.  The root and links 2,3, and 4 are still numbered correctly but the link now numbered 5 is the one that used to be 6.  Link 6 used to be 7, 7 used to be 9, and so forth. Any script that is expecting to change the color of link 6 will change the wrong one.  If it expected to trigger a particle effect in link 11, it will stall completely because there is no link #11.

A good scripter will anticipate situations like that and will not refer to links by number, but that takes experience and good planning.  There's a very good chance that a scripted item that you buy in SL will not have been created by someone who thinks that far ahead. If you remove a link in their creation, you may end up with a ruined object.  (BTW, you can't just say "Ooops!" and relink things. They will not relink in their original order unless you unlink everything and put them back together inexactly the right way.)