Datasheet
20n Chapter 1: Blender Basics: Interface and Objects
highlighted fields in that figure indicate the object name and the name of the Mesh data-
block. They both read Cube. Because objects and datablocks have separate namespaces, it
is not a problem for them to be named identically; in fact, most of the time, it is intuitive,
so they should be named identically.
Now, in Object mode, click to place your 3D cursor off to one side of the default cube,
press Shift+A to open the Add menu, and add a cone mesh, as shown in Figure 1.13.
Select the Cap Ends option in the Tool Shelf when adding the cone so that the cone is a
closed solid mesh. Note that the mesh name and the object name, predictably enough, are
Cone, as you can see in Figure 1.14. (If you add another object of the same type, Blender
automatically appends the suffix .001 to the end of the new name and increments for
each subsequent new object.)
Select the Cube Mesh object by right-clicking it. Click the small triangle mesh icon
to the left of the datablock’s name in the Object Data’s Properties window, as shown in
Figure 1.15; a drop-down menu appears with the available mesh names. In the drop-
down menu, Cone will be an option. Select this option, and your Cube object is now a
cone! Not only is it a cone, but it’s the same cone as the Cone object. If you edit the mesh
on one of these objects, both objects’ meshes will be edited, as you can see in Figure 1.16.
Figure 1.12
Viewing object properties and object
data properties
Figure 1.13
The Add menu (Shift+A)
Figure 1.14
The object and
datablock names
visible in the Prop-
erties windows
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