thankyou both for your suggestions, I really appreciate your time and help!!!!! dragging & dropping all other parts onto a "main" part in the heirarchy window worked...I can now move the cottage as one whole object...I tried selecting one part of the cottage and clicking on body under the parameter dial, but for some reason it selected the Fairytale Story Millenium Environment walls & terrain that I have in my scene instead, which happens to be the only item under the Figure dropdown at the bottom left of the render window...the cottage is a prop and doesn't show up as a figure, so I guess trying to select "body" must automatically default to selecting the body of the only known figure in the scene...but I could be (and probably am) wrong! thanks again for all help! :D Karen

Say what you mean and mean what you say.