for Petr - this gets into the main code base an option Ted coded a while

ago to hook in an "export selected" operator.

Author: Ben Supnik

io_xplane2blender/xplane_export.py

@@ -47,6 +47,12 @@ class EXPORT_OT_ExportXPlane(bpy.types.Operator, ExportHelper):
         default="",
     )
 
+    only_selected_roots: bpy.props.BoolProperty(
+        name = "Only Selected Roots",
+        description = "If true, only valid selected roots will be exported",
+        default=False
+    )
+
     export_is_relative: bpy.props.BoolProperty(
         name="Export Is Relative",
         description="Set to true when starting the export via the button (with or without the GUI on in case of unit testing)",
@@ -93,7 +99,9 @@ def execute(self, context):
         bpy.context.view_layer.update()
 
         xplaneFiles = xplane_file.createFilesFromBlenderRootObjects(
-            bpy.context.scene, bpy.context.view_layer
+            bpy.context.scene, 
+            bpy.context.view_layer,
+            self.only_selected_roots            
         )
         for xplaneFile in xplaneFiles:
             if not self._writeXPlaneFile(xplaneFile, export_directory):

io_xplane2blender/xplane_types/xplane_file.py

@@ -51,7 +51,9 @@ class NotExportableRootError(ValueError):
 
 
 def createFilesFromBlenderRootObjects(
-    scene: bpy.types.Scene, view_layer: bpy.types.ViewLayer
+    scene: bpy.types.Scene, 
+    view_layer: bpy.types.ViewLayer,
+    only_selected_roots: bool = False,    
 ) -> List["XPlaneFile"]:
     """
     Returns a list of all created XPlaneFiles from all valid roots found,
@@ -60,9 +62,15 @@ def createFilesFromBlenderRootObjects(
     view_layer is needed to test exportability
     """
     xplane_files: List["XPlaneFile"] = []
-    for potential_root in (
-        scene.objects[:] + xplane_helpers.get_collections_in_scene(scene)[1:]
-    ):
+    
+    if only_selected_roots:
+        potential_roots = [ob for ob in scene.objects if ob.select_get()]
+    else:
+        potential_roots = (
+            scene.objects[:] + xplane_helpers.get_collections_in_scene(scene)[1:]
+        )
+    
+    for potential_root in potential_roots:
         try:
             xplane_file = createFileFromBlenderRootObject(potential_root, view_layer)
         except NotExportableRootError as e: