Collection Utilities addon provides a few quality of life conveniences for managing your scene and working with collections and instances.

1. Batch creation of collections from selected objects ready for instancing
   
2. Setting collection instance offsets in bulk
3. Transferring names between datablocks
4. Duplication of collection hierarchy without duplicating objects
   

Batch creation of collections allows you to quickly create collections ready for instancing, one from each of the selected objects, automatically naming them and correctly setting Instance Offset Coordinates from each object coordinates.

It also allows quickly setting instance offset coordinates for existing collections from objects, 3D Cursor, or scene coordinates.

Set collection instance offset allows manipulation of multiple collection instance offsets at the same time, setting them from object, 3D cursor or world zero independently for each axis.

Name Transfer operations copy name between datablocks, like transferring object name to objectdata, from collections to objects or even from collection instance names to objects or vice-versa.

Transfer Names

Transfer Names is a scene organization and management tool for people who want to keep their data tidy and neatly named, helping by transferring names between datablocks.

It allows copying names between say object to objectdata, from collections to objects, or collection instance to object.

To use it select a bunch of objects you wish to rename and go to the 3D View header menu under Object > Make Links > Transfer Names.

Set Collection Instance Offset

Set Collection Instance Offset allows defining the Collection Instance Offset parameter for several collection instances at the same time and conveniently from several origins options beyond the default 3D Cursor provided by Blender.

Collection instance offset is a coordinate in 3D space used to define the center of an instanced asset when duplicated using an empty through Add > Collection Instance. The center will be the point placed at the Empty object origin.

These are often neglected, displaced when moving objects or undefined by default for newly created collections.

When creating instances there is frequently one "main" or "parent"" object which is already placed at the correct position with a desired center coordinate. This operator sets the collection offset directly from the selected object coordinates, avoiding the chore of manually placing the 3D Cursor for each individual collection which quickly grows unmanageable if you have dozens or even hundreds of them.

Most common use case is selecting a bunch of objects belonging to different collections and whose origins represent the desired collections centers, then go to Object > Collections > Set Offset.

Collection Creation

Batch Collection Creation allows you to quickly create collections ready for instancing directly from a bunch of selected objects whose origins already represent the desired collections centers

Go to Object > Collections > Create Collections and one collection named after the object name will be created for each selected object, and the center set for the position of said object. Options to automatically include child objects are available.

This saves tremendous time when you have a lot of instances to setup.

Collection Hierarchy duplication

Collection Hierarchy duplication can be accessed from the Outliner collection context menu, and allows you to duplicate a collection and its sub collections hierarchy, without duplicating objects.

This differs from default operators in that it doesn't create new objects nor object data. Existing objects will be kept at their current collections and additionally linked to the new collections hierarchy.

Useful if you want to duplicate complex collection and sub collection hierarchies, make new assets based on existing collections, or simply duplicate a certain collection structure verbatim to a new scene.