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Copying vs. instancing
The copy node creates copies of the source geometry on each point of the destination geometry. It creates actual geometry in the scene you can then model with, but it increases the amount of processing Houdini has to do to cook and display the scene.
See the 
Copy to Points shelf tool and the Copy node help for more information on copying.
Point instancing copies the geometry at render time, so each copy only exists momentarily as its area of the image is rendered. The geometry only appears in the render, not in the viewer.
