Move Append feature to Import menu
When someone wants to import objects from a .blend file, they'll look for words like "Import" and ".blend" or "Blender" in the File menu.
Instead, the command is Append, and many new users fail to recognize it as what they're looking for.
Why not make simply add .blend to the list of importable file types?
4 Comments
Appending is a fundamentally different action to importing. It gives you the ability to dig through a .blend file to find the type of thing you want to import (materials, objects etc.) and allows you to instance data from the file. Importing suggests that you want import a filetype without any linking/instancing. I believe they should remain separate and there's such a thing as too many training wheels, especially since users can already copy/paste from one open instance of Blender to another if they find Append confusing.
I understand the difference between the features. The question is whether "Append" is the word someone will look for when they want to bring in data from a .blend file.
A new user won't find Append confusing because they won't find Append. They'll look in the Import menu because they want to import.
But you don't "instance" when appending, and being able to select precisely what to import from a specific file isn't a concept foreign to importing, either.
@smoothie Your proposal isn't simply to change the word "append" but to also include it in the import menu. To address that I need to stress the differences.
I don't believe a ".blend" under import filetypes would solve the presumed issue because Append isn't there to crudely import/convert a file into Blender-native data. Fine-grained extraction of specific Blender-native data and its related dependencies (rigs, children, materials etc.) from a .blend file is a core aspect of Append, rather than importing the whole file and broadly excluding chosen data types. As a sister operation to Link it makes sense to keep them related in the UI.
It's a confusing and complex operation by nature that perhaps could be simplified or better explained but I don't believe this is the way to do that. That's especially apparent when you consider that all import types may be rolled into a single dialogue eventually: Append's functionality would be distinct and jarring if included in that context.
@lauloque You can absolutely "instance" when appending, "instance collections/object data" is in the dialogue. It's not linked to the original file like it would be with "Link" and I'm not sure why one would use it, but it's there. Check my above response for why importing specific parts isn't the same.