Meshes as Variables...

If I assign a mesh in the editor to a public variable in script of type "Mesh", when I assign it's content to an object (...meshFilter.mesh = ...), does Unity LOAD the Mesh then, or is it already cached in memory?

I change meshes on a number of my objects over the course of the game, and I'm noticing quite a bit of slowdown, even on iPhone 3GS. This shouldn't be the case, as there are only around 20 objects, and they're all box colliders?

Anyone have any ideas?

Why not attach all the various meshes to a parent gameObject, and simply turn on or off the ones you need or don't need?

When you assign the mesh, it gets loaded into the graphics hardware. I think that is what slows things down.

Any way to get around this, then? Any way to "pre-load" meshes so I don't get the performance hit?

Can you use prefabs? The performance will be far greater if you are using prefabs.