You use the features on the Adjust Transform rollout to transform objects after they have been linked without transforming descendents, and to reset an object's transform.
You might discover, after linking a number of objects, that you need to move, rotate, or scale a parent object but you do not want to affect the object's descendents. You can transform a parent object without affecting its descendents by clicking Don't Affect Children on the Adjust Transform rollout of the Hierarchy panel.
Resetting an Object's Orientation and Scale
Click the Transform button in the Reset group to rotate an object's pivot to match its parent's local coordinate system. Descendents of the object are not affected.
Resetting an Object's Scale Only
Click the Scale button in the Reset group to set the current scale value as the selected object's base scale value. All following scale transforms are then applied using the base scale value as an absolute local scale of 100%.
Consider a sphere with a radius of 20 units and a linked child object:
Uniform Scale to scale the sphere to 200%. The sphere and its child become twice as big. Scale Transform Type-In reports
an Absolute Local Scale of 200% and the object's creation parameters report a radius of 20 units. The true radius of the sphere
is 200% of 20 units, or 40 units.
Select the sphere and click Reset Scale. The sphere and its child remain the same size. Here's what has happened:
The 200% scale has been absorbed by the sphere as its original state. The sphere has a true radius of 40 units, Creation Parameters report a radius of 20 units, and absolute local scale is 100%.
The sphere's child object accepts a local scale of 200% so it does not change in size.
Resetting the scale of an object can lead to confusion because the object's true size, absolute local scale, and creation parameters no longer match up.
Using the Reset Transform Utility
You can also reset the orientation and scale of an object by clicking Reset XForm on the Utilities panel. Reset XForm takes the rotation and scale transforms of an object and places them in an XForm modifier on the modifier stack.
Consider the same sphere as before with a radius of 20 units and a linked child object:
Uniform Scale to scale the sphere to 200%. The sphere and its child become twice as big. The Scale Transform Type-In reports
an Absolute Local scale of 200% and Creation Parameters report a radius of 20 units. The true radius of the sphere is 200%
of 20 units, or 40 units.
Select the sphere and click Reset XForm. The sphere remains the same size but its child reverts to its original size and
position. Here's what has happened:
The 200% scale has been placed in an XForm modifier on the sphere's modifier stack. The sphere has a true radius of 40 units, Creation Parameters report a radius of 20 units, and absolute local scale is 100%.
The sphere's child object now sees only the 100% local scale so it reverts to its original size and position.