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I have "instances" enabled, but no tamale. There are 3 options with the insert block command, embed, link and embed, and link...none are working for me.

Odd thing is that when I tested this in a new file it worked fine, although it made no difference whether "instances" was enabled or not

It should not matter whether you use embed, link, or embed and link...that's none of the plugin's business. I have seen it happen before that Rhino has lost track of the instances table and neglected to tell the plugin that some block references exist - in that case, of course they would not be exported.

So, the question would be, are your blocks:

a. not being exported
b. being exported, but somewhere off in space, out of the camera's view

When exporting a scene with Instances enabled, there are two phases (provided there are actually any blocks to export as instances) and you see messages about them printed in the command line:

1. mesh transfer 12.5%% completed (and so on until all meshes are exported)
2. Exporting blocks as instances
3. block transfer 16.7%% completed, (and so on until all blocks are exported)
4. ExportScene returned: True

What do you see reported when you export your scene? Does the plugin think it's exporting your blocks, or not? If not, restart Rhino to see if maybe its instance table has gotten out of order. If so, open the MXS in Studio and confirm whether or not instances are actually being exported, and where they are ending up; maybe there's a problem there (mind the display % for instances in Studio though - if it's set to a low %, it will look like instances are missing).

On your second point, the 'Instances' switch ought never change how things look in the render - if it's disabled, then blocks will be exported just as they are given to it by Rhino - as plain meshes.

working now. I closed that session of Rhino and reopened...it did work fine in other tests, so we're good here. I'll remember to restart Rhino next time if something like this happens.
BTW...I feel badly to be so high mainenance You've been really patient and helpful...frankly if I had to pay you for your time I don't think that I could afford it

No worries, sir.