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Remove Objects and Children

In one sentence: Delete the selected objects and every object in their subtree that is not referenced by anything outside the subtree.

Overview

Workbench: OpenSCAD
Menu: OpenSCAD → Remove Objects and Children
Shortcut: none

A smarter delete: removes the selected objects and recursively deletes all child objects that would become orphans — objects that are no longer referenced by any remaining object in the document. Objects that are shared (referenced by something outside the deleted subtree) are preserved.

Intuition

Pressing Delete in FreeCAD only removes the top-level object; its children often become orphaned objects that clutter the document tree. Remove Objects and Children cleans up the entire branch at once — like pruning a dead branch from a tree all the way back to where it connects to healthy wood.

When to use it

  • You tried a boolean operation that failed and want to remove the failed boolean along with the temporary shapes it created.
  • You are discarding an experimental branch of the modelling tree.
  • You want to clean up the document after replacing objects.

When NOT to use it

  • When child objects are shared — shared children are not deleted. This is intentional and safe behaviour; you don't need to worry about accidentally deleting objects still in use.

Step-by-step

  1. Select the root object(s) of the subtree to delete.
  2. Choose OpenSCAD → Remove Objects and Children.
  3. FreeCAD deletes the selected objects and all unreferenced children.

Parameters

No parameters — operates on the current selection.

Common mistakes and pitfalls

Expected child was not deleted

Cause: The child is referenced by another object outside the deleted subtree, so it is preserved.
Fix: This is correct behaviour. Delete the other referencing object first if you also want the child removed.

Python API

import FreeCADGui as Gui
Gui.doCommand("Gui.runCommand('OpenSCAD_RemoveSubtree', 0)")

See also