Duplicate Measures
This function is pretty common in the DAW/sequencer world, but I find it useful for score editing as well. Basically, it's just a step forward from the basic Insert After functionality, but it would further eliminate the unnecessary select-copy-paste operations across multiple staves.
1) Select several consecutive measures (or just one, but it would be more commonly used for groups of 2, 4, etc.). It should be enough to select measures on any staff, and it would work for all staves.
2) Click "Duplicate selected" or hit the corresponding keyboard shortcut.
3) The exact copy of the selected measures is inserted after the selected occurance.
4) You can then edit what's different while having what stays the same (like the rhythm section).
Another variant may be selecting measures across several staves, and their content would be duplicated, while on the rest of the staves the inserted measures would be blank. In different situations either of the options may prove more convenient. Probably the best would be to have both variants of the command available.
Comments
MuseScore already allows you to duplicate a selection in the beat immediately following the selection. The default shortcut is r. You can select a few notes, several measures including multiple staves. This does not insert a duplicate, but rather writes over whatever might already be there. One other thing to keep in mind is that it must be a continuous selection. You cannot select the 1st, 2nd and 4th staves and not select the 3rd staff for example.
Yes, but the idea is to expand the section. First of all, the Insert After function would work for that, if it is implemented, and then you can select what you need, press r, and it's done... if you haven't made a mistake in the amount of measures inserted - so, you see, this operation is still potentially destructive, and you may find out your mistake way too late, having done editing the duplicated section, and then trying to listen to it as a whole... whoops, I've erased the first bar of the next section! That's why it's better to have an atomic, non-destructive operation for that.
Another case where duplicating measures is better than inserting measures and then duplicating notes is when the meter changes in regular patterns - thing very common in progressive rock. If you have a section in four-bar sequences of 6/8, 6/8, 6/8, 5/8 (example: VdGG - Nutter Alert) and you need to add another run of that, it's better to select and duplicate four bars than... imagine the mess of doing that otherwise!
Generally, I suppose that we're thinking more in terms of measures and their sequences when composing, so operations on measures are no less important than operations on notes.
In your other feature request I agreed that the insert measure after needs to be implemented. I did not realize that you were basically asking for the same thing here with the addition of being able to duplicate a measure in the process.
Currently, if you duplicate a group of measures, time and key changes are not included, so you end up with a mess until you manually fix it, or prepare the destination measures for the input. There have been multiple requests for the ability to copy key and time signatures. Your request would be an extension of this idea. There are issues with inserting less than a full measure that would need to be addressed and have been discussed ad nausium in other threads and feature requests. Here is one example: https://musescore.org/en/node/90126 There are many more.