What happens to non-parented instances, and is there a way to use them efficiently?

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#1

Topic

What happens to created objects that are created with Instance.new() or :Clone(), but are never parented using the .Parent argument?

Questions & Theories

I’m interested to know what happens if for example, I clone a Part, and set its .Position and .Size, but never actually Parent the part.

Can I still cast rays from the .Position of the Part, even though its .Parent isn’t ever being set to anything, and not have to worry about using :Destroy() to later remove the Part in order to stop a memory leak from the buildup of parts?

Could this even slightly boost performance, and is it better than simply setting a Part’s .Transparency to 1 in order to never render it, and then using :Destroy() on it?

According to Roblox, setting a Part’s .Parent to nil causes it to be “temporarily removed”, what does that mean?

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#2

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I do believe this is the same when you use Instance.new() as well, and you can manage change its properties but I don’t believe you can actually use it with other scripts (Unless if you call WaitForChild())

I believe it’s just a placeholder for it, not sure though

#3

You can later reparent it somewhere(eg workspace) as long as you have the variable that references the part. It will not be completely removed by gc

#4

What if I don’t want to reparent the Part anywhere, as this makes me have to call :Destroy() (this uses up more memory).

Would there be a performance boost if I just never Parented the Part, but still cast rays from it?

#5

wdym by that? You don’t need a part for raycasting

#6

Let’s say I want to grab the Part’s .Position for the [origin] argument that’s needed for raycasting. Would it boost performance if I never set the .Parent, but just used the Part to grab the .Position?

#7

I am not sure if that will even work or not, it might. But why can’t you just have a vector3 value if you only wanted the position? Instancing a part is pretty expensive

#8

That’s why I’m asking this in the first place.

This would be the best way to do it, but I’m just giving a scenario.

#9

tested in a baseplate, it works

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#10

Thank you for testing it. I will mark you as the solution.

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