It helps to optimize complex scenes created from a mesh tiles, by adding option to non-destructively join all meshes inside collection into the new object.
Right-click collection in outliner (scene panel). You should see two options, at the end of the context menu:
- Join all meshes assigned to selected collection.
- Join Recursive all meshes assigned to selected collection AND all meshes in descendant collections.
Resulting object will be appended at the end of collection.
Put inside %BLENDER_DIR%/2.80/scripts/addons
OR
Use install feature (Edit/Preferences/Add-ons/Install) from inside of Blender
AND
don't forget to enable the addon (via preferences mentioned above) ;-)
Blender 2.80 obviously, since this is the version that introduced collections.
bmesh combine function taken from from https://github.com/nortikin/sverchok (GPL3 license)
Models used in gif: