# Flatten parent and child UDTs into one?

**URL:** <https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/flatten-parent-and-child-udts-into-one/103185>\
**Category:** Ignition\
**Created:** [March 4, 2025, 3:31am UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/flatten-parent-and-child-udts-into-one/103185 "2025-03-04T03:31:46Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![msteele](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/msteele/32/77889_2.png) [@msteele](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/msteele)\
**Post date:** [March 4, 2025, 3:31am UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/flatten-parent-and-child-udts-into-one/103185/1 "2025-03-04T03:31:46Z")

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I have a parent UDT, and I have a child UDT with overrides and additions. I want to flatten this structure so there is one UDT that describes the child as it functions with its parent, but removing the parent/child relationship and bringing everything into a single UDT.

Is there a process to do this?

Changing the child's parent to `<none>` wipes out everything but the members only existing in the child.

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**Author:** ![Chris\_Bingham](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Chris\_Bingham](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/Chris_Bingham)\
**Post date:** [March 4, 2025, 4:15am UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/flatten-parent-and-child-udts-into-one/103185/2 "2025-03-04T04:15:03Z")

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Within a **single** designer session, while editing a UDT, I regularly copy members of a UDT definition and paste them to another with great success.  
In your case, you should be able to (untested):

- Edit Parent UDT, select desired (all) tags, right-click & copy. Cancel edits.
- Edit Child UDT, change parent type to . Paste clipboard (members of parent UDT) to desired destination folder (root) of child UDT. Apply. Check. Test.  
A disclaimer, I have had issues with instances going haywire (requiring a recreate) when significant changes made to a child UDT template.  
I'm curious what others have done.

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**Author:** ![pturmel](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/pturmel/32/3295_2.png) [@pturmel](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/pturmel)\
**Post date:** [March 4, 2025, 12:53pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/flatten-parent-and-child-udts-into-one/103185/3 "2025-03-04T12:53:27Z")

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I recommending exporting both as JSON, then merging the `tags` array manually.