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Overview
The shelf is the strip of icons along the top of the main window. It gives you quick access to commonly used functions. You can customize the shelf to set up your own tabs, as well as add your own scripts and digital assets to the shelf.
The shelf has three basic units of customization:
Shelf set
A set of tabs appearing in their own resizable partition of the shelf.
Tab
A set of tools appearing inside a shelf set. The same tab can be present in multiple shelf sets.
Tool
An icon hooked up to a script to activate a tool or perform some other action. The same tool can be present on multiple tabs.
Both tabs and shelf sets are saved to .shelf files. Tabs define the tab name/label and the tools to display in the correct order. Shelf sets contains the tabs and the order to display them.
All tools are saved in toolbar tabs. All toolbar tabs are saved in a single .shelf file on disk in a the $HOUDINI_TOOLBAR_PATH
or in a toolbar directory within the $HOUDINI_PATH
. Shelf sets are collections of toolbar tabs and are also saved in .shelf a file containing the references to the toolbar tabs.
Adding to and editing the shelf
To... | Do this |
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Rearrange tools and tabs |
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Create a new shelf item to run a script |
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Create a new action that adds a node when clicked |
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Edit an existing tool |
Click the tool and choose Edit tool. See the Edit tool window for more information. |
Add a tab to a shelf set |
Click the tab options menu and choose New tab. |
Edit which tools appear on a tab |
Click the tab and choose Edit tab. |
Add a shelf set to the shelf |
Click the shelf menu and choose New shelf set. |
Edit which tabs appear in a shelf set |
Click the shelf menu in the shelf set’s partition and choose Edit shelf set. |
Assign a global hotkey to a shelf tool |
Hold ⇧ Shift + ⌃ Ctrl + Alt and click the shelf item. For more information, see Configure hotkeys. |
Rename a shelf set |
Click the shelf menu, and choose Edit Shelf Set. |
Showing and hiding tabs and shelf sets
To... | Do this |
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Show or hide tabs in a shelf set |
Click the tab options menu and use the lower menu of tabs to turn tabs on or off. |
Show or hide a shelf set |
Click the shelf menu and use the Shelf Sets submenu to turn shelf sets on or off. |
Downloading shelf sets
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Click the tab options menu and choose Download Shelf.
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A dialog appears showing you available shelf sets on the Exchange.
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Select the package you want to install and click Download.
You can use the Install shelf to menu to choose the toolbar directory on the path into which you want to save the downloaded shelf information.