Description:
The Instance tools are made up of an instance regeneration tool, and a geometry replacement tool. The regeneration tool can record and re-establish instance geometry relationships after a destructive operation (such as a boolean) was performed on one of the instanced nodes.
The geometry replacement tool will replace a mesh with another mesh without altering pivot points or instance relationships. Useful when replacing large numbers of instanced proxy geometry with the final geometry.
Check out the Instance tools in action!
Motivation:
This tool was a request I received from a modeler. He was annoyed with the available tools in max when trying to update a highly detailed model that made extensive use of instanced objects. The clone and align tool in max is great but it requires many steps to achieve desired results.
Solution
Max offers some great functionality exposed to maxscript but a lot of that isn't wrapped into actual tools that ship with the product. These tools simply make it easy for artists with no scripting experience to take advantage of it.