How to place duplicated objects at various locations/rotations in a scene? I've got a model that I'd like to duplicate at a variety of locations; at the rectangles here:



I wondered if I could create a parent mesh, with a vertex at each place I want a duplicate:



The problem with this is that there doesn't seem to be a way to customize the rotations at each of the duplicates.

Is there a way to duplicate an object (and its children) at various places, without simply duplicating the object a bunch of times?
This sounds like an XY problem. If you're trying to make an animation and move them all together, it's probably easier to just duplicate them a bunch of times and then parent the objects to a common empty.


Duplicate and move them. You can do the  rotation by putting the 3D cursor where you want the center and setting the Pivot Center to '3D Cursor'.
Add an Empty object at the center point. If you used the 3D cursor rotation method, it will be added at the correct point to start!
Select all the objects you want to move together, and then the Empty you just added. Press Ctrl+P to parent them.


Now when you move the  Empty around (or rotate it), the other objects will follow it.