What is the quickest / best way of duplicating an object with children, so that the children are also duplicated? What is the quickest / best way of duplicating an object with children, so that the children are also duplicated?

I am able to grab the parent object and move it around in the 3D View and the child follows fine, but unless I go into the Outliner and RMB click on the parent and choose "Select Hierarchy" to select the parent AND the children before I duplicate, only the parent gets duplicated. I would like to know the quickest and best way to grab the parent object and all children in the 3D View and duplicate it without too much hassle.

In other words, is there a way to Select Hierarchy in the 3D View instead of having to use the Outliner?
You can do this by using the 'Select Grouped' menu, triggered with Shift+G.


Select Parent.
Shift+G> Children.
Shift select parent (by default it will be deselected when the children get selected).
Shift+D to duplicate.


If you are doing this multiple times you can open the toolbar(T) and check 'Extend' after doing 'Select Grouped', so the parent remains selected when the children are selected. Any future selection of the children will respect this 'Extend' setting.