Enabling and disabling collections by object

We can enable or disable a collection that contains a specific object using the Blender Python API with a simple script. For example, let’s turn off the collection in which the currently selected object is.

.blend file on Patreon

First we need to get a pointer to the collection in which our object lies.

bpy.context.object.users_collection

# (bpy.data.collections['Collection'], bpy.data.collections['Collection 5'])

bpy.context.object.users_collection

# (bpy.data.collections['Collection'], bpy.data.collections['Collection 5'])

Since an object can reside in more than one collection, we get a list of pointers.

Let’s go through the resulting list in a loop and turn off all collections. We can turn off the scene collection (monitor icon) with the following code.

for col in bpy.context.object.users_collection:
    col.hide_viewport = True

1 2	for col in bpy.context.object.users_collection: col.hide_viewport = True

To turn off a collection on a view layer, we need to get a pointer to the view layer collection. We can use the following function for this:

def layer_collection(name, _layer_collection=None):
    if _layer_collection is None:
        _layer_collection = bpy.context.view_layer.layer_collection
    if _layer_collection.name == name:
        return _layer_collection
    else:
        for l_col in _layer_collection.children:
            if rez := layer_collection(name=name, _layer_collection=l_col):
                return rez

def layer_collection(name, _layer_collection=None):

if _layer_collection is None:

_layer_collection = bpy.context.view_layer.layer_collection

if _layer_collection.name == name:

return _layer_collection

else:

for l_col in _layer_collection.children:

if rez := layer_collection(name=name, _layer_collection=l_col):

return rez

Having a pointer to the view layer collection, we can turn its visibility on and off (checkbox and eye icons):

for col in bpy.context.object.users_collection:
    l_col = layer_collection(col.name)
    l_col.exclude = True
    l_col.hide_viewport = True

for col in bpy.context.object.users_collection:

l_col = layer_collection(col.name)

l_col.exclude = True

l_col.hide_viewport = True

Full code:

import bpy

def layer_collection(name, _layer_collection=None):
    if _layer_collection is None:
        _layer_collection = bpy.context.view_layer.layer_collection
    if _layer_collection.name == name:
        return _layer_collection
    else:
        for l_col in _layer_collection.children:
            if rez := layer_collection(name=name, _layer_collection=l_col):
                return rez

cols = bpy.context.object.users_collection

for col in cols:
    col.hide_viewport = True
    l_col = layer_collection(col.name)
    l_col.exclude = True
    l_col.hide_viewport = True

import bpy