Thank you Jeff.
I was not sure of the behavior of the “Read Only Pre-Transforms”, but now I get it and it will surely help me
I usually favour nulls over “pre-transforms” to zero out the transforms of the controllers because they are easy to visualise, manipulate and animate if needed.
I do understand they add overhead if they are not used, so I will try your strategy to optimize rigs if they get too heavy.
I've always been sceptical about pre-transforms and neutral poses since they first appeared in DCCs because to me, it sounds like now we've added a matrix multiplication to each object, even when not needed. But I guess this overhead is less than the overhead of a null object and all it's attributes and properties when we do want to use it as a “pre-transform”.
Thanks again for your instructive reply
I will use your strategy.