Hello.
You assume two instances of Blender opened and with different projects each. I know the objects can be copied to the clipboard with Ctrl+C, and then pasting in the other instance with Ctrl+V.
Is it possible to do the same but with nodes or node groups?
At least I can not do it with Ctrl+C.
Shift+F1 to append data blocks from a saved blend file to an open blend file. For nodes append materials or put into a node groups and append the group
Thanks Richard.
This is the shorcut to “Append” and is really useful. But this involves opening a file browser and then locate the file and much more mouse clicks.
Happens that I was studying the nodes of a material in a .blend I had downloaded out there, and I had open it in an instance of Blender. Meanwhile I had another instance of Blender open with my project. I just wanted to select a group of nodes of the material I was study (not all the material) and easily copy and paste it into my project.
Is there any technical reason why you can not simply select one or more nodes in an instance of Blender, copy to clipboard and then paste them into another instance of Blender?
That is, exactly the same procedure that can be done by copying/pasting objects.
When I do Ctrl+C in one Blender instance it reports “copy to clipboard”. But when I do Ctrl+V in the other Blender instance the message is “Report: Error - Clipboard is empty”.
Blender not really using the Windows clipboard? Maybe you could get a developer to respond over in the Technical Support forum
Hello.
Maybe I have not explained well. I’m using Linux, and I was asking if a Windows user could confirm if the same problem occurs in Windows.
In Linux Blender uses the clipboard only if you copy/paste into the same instance of Blender. If you copy in an Blender instance and then paste into another Blender instance, then this second instance reports that the clipboard is empty (not possible to copy nodes from one instance to another instance)
XP user here :D. Use when not on Linux box.
I almost am willing to bet on eating my hat that copy paste Material node trees was possible between Blender instances. Almost…
This does not work on recent GB branch of Blender - “Clipboard is empty” or uses second instance’s buffer effectively doubling existing nodes.
Now what concerns Compositor nodes- if i try copy Comp node tree to another running Blender instance it throws convoluted message “Cipboard nodes are an incompatible type” which suggests THERE ARE NODES on the OS clipboard however some part of Blender code can not deal with this fact properly.
Either feature or bug…
Thank you eppo for testing.
I’ve reported it just in case this is a bug.
sabba, important: I guess you are talking about developer.blender.org, which isn’t a “Technical Support forum” but the place we use to organize our development as well as bug and patch tracker. So besides from the bug tracker, this is a place for developers, not for technical support. This is important because we have to tell that people all the time which is quite annoying 
Just in case I clarify that I have reported this not because sabba suggestion, but because it is confusing (see above two mentioned threads) if this feature was possible in previous versions of Blender (or in Windows only). So if I messed up reporting this, my fault 
I wonder how the hell “users” can know whether something confusing discussed in the forum, is or not a bug, if you do not mention it to the developers? Then obviously, they decide whether or not this is a bug. By the way, I was not looking for technical support with this report.
Anyway, I hope that developers can incorporate this feature because it would simplify the task of importing nodes.
A workarund for Shader node may be copied whole object from one instance to another with Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, then copy material nodes from one object to another in the same instance.
I can not imagine workaround for Compositing nodes.