The tool palette can display only tools, only gallery entries, or both. By default it displays both, but this can be configures in the Contents menu by clicking the gear menu and choosing either Both Tools and Galleries, Only Tools, or Only Galleries.

The shelf tools and gallery entries are shown as leaves of a tree whose branches are the categories to which the tool or the entry belong. You can see these categories in the tool/gallery editors by clicking on the leaf representing the tool/gallery entry, and choosing Edit. In the gallery entry editor, look for the Categories field, and in the shelf tool editor, look for the TAB Submenu Path on the Context tab.

There are several ways you can open/close the tool palette. You can use any of the following methods.

• Click the Show/Hide tool palette controls button.

• Click the gear menu in the network editor, then choose Viewing Controls and enable or disable the Show Tool Palette option.

  Similarly, you can click in in the network editor, then choose Viewing Controls and enable or disable the Show Tool Palette option.

• In the network editor, press D to open the Network Editor Display Options dialog. On the Common tab you can toggle the Show Tool Palette on and off.

• Use the neteditor hscript command with -k and -K option.

Houdini builds the tree branches based on the categories of the gallery entries and shelf tools. This means that there are no empty branches since all branches are specified by tools and galleries. However, you can create a new empty category.

• Click on the gear menu and selecting either New Gallery Category or New Tool Category.

• Enter a name for the new category in the dialog box. After accepting, this category will show up in the tree.

• Drag node (or other entity) and drop it into the newly created category.

  Note

  If you edit a gallery entry or a tool and you add a new category in the editor, Houdini will create that branch automatically and the brach will contain the entry or the tool.

Dragging a node and dropping it onto the category creates a new gallery entry or a new tool. When the new gallery entry is instantiated or the tool is invoked, they will recreate an exact copy of the dropped node. You can select several nodes and drop them on the palette. This will either create a single shelf tool that builds all selected nodes, or it will create several gallery entries, one for each dropped node.

The main purpose of the tool palette is to provide a way of creating nodes much like the tab menu does. Gallery entries represent operator nodes with specific values of the parameters (and their contents, if they are subnets), and the shelf tools are scripts that instantiate nodes and set their parameters. The end effect for both galleries and shelf tools is an instantiated node or nodes.