[Question] Updating Prims during simulation without setting up new scene/environment

[tobyjack19]

Question

I am looking to update prims within an environment during simulation, ideally update the entire robot from a USD. I recognise that the best supported method to achieve this would be to close my scene/env and recreate it using a new USD, but I was wondering if there anyone had any advice for either:

overwriting entire robot USD during environment reset (mid simulation)

or if that isn't possible, overwriting specific meshes within my robot prim for one or all environments in the scene

I fully recognise that IsaacLab isn't really intended to be used this way, I'm just interested to hear if there is any way I could do this without rebuilding the entire scene - any thoughts are appreciated.

Thankyou!

Build Info

Describe the versions that you are currently using:

• Isaac Lab Version: [e.g. 2.2.0]
• Isaac Sim Version: [e.g. 5.0.0, this can be obtained by cat ${ISAACSIM_PATH}/VERSION]

[RandomOakForest]

Thank you for posting this. You cannot hot‑swap an entire robot USD “in place” while physics is running, but you can safely (1) delete and respawn the robot between steps/resets or (2) swap sub‑meshes or references on specific prims, as long as you manage physics state and Isaac Lab views carefully.