How to get around with |-problem (Parenting)

[greatPumpkin]

it's because your throwing the plane in an array, and then grouping it- so before grouping it's full path name is '|plane' , then after grouping it's called '|testGroup01|plane', your variables will not update on the fly so maya can't find the object when you try and get the attribute later.

Try re-working your script so that each plane has a definitive unique name, maya will generally give you the shortest name by default, so you won't get the '|' problems if your names are unique. Also, most commands return their output anyway, so you don't need to do an `ls -sl` afterwards to put them in arrays-

i.e.

for($i = 0;$i < 5;$i++)
{
string $plate[] = ` polyCube -ch 0-n ("testPlate" + $i)`;
addAttr -ln "Length" -k true -dv (`getAttr ($plate[0] + ".scaleZ")`);
string $grp = `group -n ("testGroup" + $i) $plate[0]`;
}


also, if you want an easier, though more fragile solution, your script should work fine if you add the attribute to the cube before you group it.

[damat]

also you can use -l flag in ls command:
ls -sl -l will return // Result: |group1|pPlane1

[BluesmanI]

Thanx for all the hints. Will try them immediately.

@greatPumpkin:
... your script should work fine if you add the attribute to the cube before you group it.

The problem is, I have to add the attribute to the group, not to one of the members. My script will look for the group names and then "extract" their custom attributes. ;-)

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