# Structure Tools

Warning

Never duplicate nor copy and paste Structures in After Effects, always create new Structures or use the Duplicate button in the Structures panel of Duik.

Internal unique identifiers are associated with the Structures, which won’t be updated when you copy or duplicate the Structures in After Effects. The Auto-rig and other rigging tools in Duik need these identifiers to work correctly and may fail if they are not set properly. The Duplicate tool does this.

## Toggle Edit Mode

Toggle edit mode (Standard and Expert mode) disables the parenting of all the children of the selected Structure element to be able to move it without affecting the other elements.

1. Select some Structure elements
2. Click the Toggle edit mode button
3. You can now edit the Structure elements, moving, rotating and scaling them as you wish
4. Once you have moved the Structure as you wish, do not forget to click the Toggle edit mode button again (with the elements selected) to re-parent the children.

## Select Structures

Click the Select structures button to select all the Structures in the composition.

## Duplicate Structures

Click the Duplicate structures button to duplicate them. On the contrary of the duplicate function of After Effects, the resulting Structure will be correctly parented, and the layers will be grouped together in the stack.

Note

When using this tool to duplicate Structures, Duik will adjust some internal stuff to make sure the Autorig can differentiate the duplicated one from the original one.

Warning

You should always use this button to duplicate Structures, and not duplicate with After Effects (`Ctrl+D`), or else the Auto-rig will consider the duplicated structure to be the same as the original one and will do weird stuff with it…

## Show/Hide Structures

Shows or hides all (or selected) Structures found in the composition.

If there is no layer selected, this will show of hide all Structures in the composition, or else it will use the layer selection.

## Edit Structures

Note

Available in Standard and Expert modes only.

Hint

In the Edit panel, you can adjust the appearance of the Structures (Standard and Expert mode).

All changes made in this panel will affect all selected Structures and the creation of all other Structures.

- You can change the size of the Structures, either automatically, relative to the size of the composition (small, medium and large options), or with an absolute value (custom option).
- You can change the color of the Structures: if you click on the colored label, a color picker will be shown, but you can also set your own hexadecimal color code in the text field. A random button will set a random color.

Hint

The color parameter is ignored when you create predefined limbs (arm, leg, etc.), but you can always change the color afterwards.

- You can pick the selected Structure appearance with the Get button, and set the parameters to the selection with the Set button.
- The Bake Appearance button will remove all expressions used by the Structure to set its appearance. This will improve the performance of the rig, but you will not be able to change the appearance afterwards.

Note

By default, the Auto-Rig automatically bakes the appearance of the Structures.

- The Auto-Link options will make Duik automatically link selected Bézier paths, Puppet pins or parent layers to newly created Structures.

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