I should have explained this. If you declare the prop as an 'actor' instead of a 'prop' you can apply a pose to the prop even if it does not have a figure as a parent (but a figure must be present in the document). If you use 'prop' the prop must have a figure as its parent otherwise the pose will not affect it. In circumstances where you want to use a pose to parent something, odds are that it is not parented to a figure to start with, so the pose would not work unless you declare the prop as an 'actor' in the pz2. As to parenting a prop to diffrent figures, it seems that the prop will parent to what ever figure is selected at the time the pose is applied (the one who's name appears under the document window), provided that that figure has an actor who's name matches the smartparent statement in the pose file. If the selected figure does not contain the appropriate parent actor then I am unable to predict what will happen, but I suspect that the prop will parent to the actor of the correct name that has the lowest actor number (:#) in the document. Adding an actor number to the prop or parent name seems to have no effect;

{
actor box_1:2
        {
        smartparent hip:2
        }
}

Seems to work the same as; { actor box_1 { smartparent hip } }

Personly I tend to leave the actor numbers out. If you load multiple instances of the same prop each will have a diffrent name as Poser increments the prop number (_#) with each new instance loaded, e.g. prop_1, prop_2, prop_3, etc. The pose file must reference the prop by name, so to affect multiple instances of the prop with the same pz2 you would have to use multiple names in it; { actor box_1 { smartparent hip } actor box_2 { smartparent hip } actor box_3 { smartparent head } }

Shadownet, you say: "is there a way to make a pose file so that I can have more than one instance of the figure and prop in the same scene, and use the pose files with smartparent command to parent the prop to the correctly selected figure. Hope I am making sense on what I am asking." Sense, err...I'm not sure...hope I am interpriting you correctly. As I said earlier the prop(s) will parent to the selected figure, I don't know any reliable way to parent "prop_1" to "head:1", and "prop_2" to "head:2" from within one pose file. You could have individual pose files for each prop_#, then select each figure in turn and apply a diffrent pz2. Hope this helps. Cheers, Les.