> My ideal situation would be I load say 20 chairs via OBJ
> import and 1st step down in hierarchy
> would select one of 20 chairs, next step down would
> select that chairs seat etc. (parent/sibling nesting)

Well yes I think we will get to that point eventually with groups.

Except OBJ not supporting hierarchy throws a monkey wrench in there.

In some cases I have seen programs encode a hierarchy inside of an object name with stuff like different levels separated by a : like the name being "Chair1:Seat:Seat Top"

Do you happen to know if trueSpace supports converting object names into a hierarchy like that? If it does then it may be possible to make it work.

What happens if you take a model that has hierarchy in trueSpace, and export it to OBJ and then read it back in again to a new fresh trueSpace program instance? Do you get the hierarchy back again or is it gone? If you get it back again, if you can send me a sample OBJ file that preserves the hierarchy then that could help.

- Michael