I'd like to turn the ashtrays with smoking cigars attached to them into misc items, so they can be picked up and placed. Not sure how to do it, though. The static is named Ashtray03Smoke (24FA9). Checking it in GECK, it's not much I can do, beside checking them as Quest Items, but I'm not sure what that will do. I can of course make new misc items using the same nif, but ideally I'd like to have the already placed ashtrays with cigars becoming possible to pick up/place. Any ideas?

EDIT: Actually, I have another issue I'll have to solve first, namely to add collisíon data etc. to the mesh so it CAN be placed in the first place. I hope NifSkope can do it - I'll try to mimic the settings that the normal ashtray mesh has.

OK, so I've tried copying the settings for the normal ashtray nif to the ashtray03smoke.nif with NifSkope and I've also checked some tips I found when googling. My main issue now seems to be that the havok/collision box is separate from the ashtray itself, http://i.imgur.com/dJbA57V.jpg.

Not sure which settings I should change in order to center it? It should be settings in bhkBoxShape I'd guess, but I can't see any settings there that changes its position.

In short, anyone here who knows the basics of NifSkope and can help me out?

EDIT: Nevermind that issue - http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/2823139-help-with-nifskope-turning-a-static-into-havoked-clutter/, so that is taken care of.

So the next question is: is there a clever way to swap the smoking ashtray statics that are placed in the world with the edited pickable/placeable ones? I tried just switching to the new nif for the statics, but that didn't help.

I suspect that the only way is to delete the statics and replace them with the new clutter smoking ashtrays? That would take a while, plus it's not such a good idea to remove vanilla items IIRC, so it would be great if there was a way to switch them to the new ones.

Anyone who has a tip?

Highlight the "Ashtray03Smoke" entry under the "Static" category, go to "Edit" on the menu bar and navigate to "Search and Replace" and click on it. That should open up a new window. Make sure "Ashtray03Smoke" is located in the "Search for" field then under the "Replace with" field find your pickup-able ashtray object and select it. Leave all the checkboxes unmarked and hit "OK". You should get a message stating X number of objects were replaced.

Doing it this way will replace every instance of the "Ashtray03Smoke" in the game world instead of replacing them in one cell at a time.

That worked perfectly - AND it was really easy! My two favorites. Thanks for the help!

EDIT: I've released it as http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/21210/?.