PolyUniteSkinned

It's rare you need it, but when you do.. you need it. 

This little hidden gem of a command will merge all your selected geometries into one. and maintain the skin weights.
And , with construction history off, it makes a very nice clean result of single orig node, single shape node, and one skin cluster. 


polyUniteSkinned -constructionHistory 0  -mergeUVSets 1 ;

Synopsis: polyUniteSkinned [flags] [String...]

Flags:

   -e -edit

   -q -query

  -ch -constructionHistory  on|off

  -cp -centerPivot         

 -muv -mergeUVSets          Int

  -op -objectPivot         

Command Type: Command