Customize the shelf

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.

Adding to and editing the shelf

To...	Do this
Rearrange tools and tabs	Drag tools within a tab to rearrange them. You can also drag a tool onto a different tab to move it there. Drag tabs to rearrange them in a shelf set. You can also drag tabs between shelf sets.
Create a new tool to run a script	See creating tools.
Create a new action that adds a node when clicked	Create an example of the node you want in the network editor. Set its parameters to the settings you want the node to have when you add it using the shelf item. Drag the node from the network editor up to the shelf and drop it on the tab. Now when you click the new shelf item, if the network pane is showing the right kind of network, Houdini will create a copy of the node you dragged up to the shelf.
Edit an existing tool	Right click the tool and choose Edit tool.
Add a tab to a shelf set	Click the tab options menu and choose New tab.
Edit which tools appear on a tab	Right 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.

Showing and hiding tabs and shelf sets

To...	Do this
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

Click the tab options menu and choose Download Shelf.
A dialog appears showing you available shelf sets on the Exchange.
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.

Customizing the Tab menu

You can make shelf items appear in the Tab menu as well. See the section on the Tab menu for more information.