As you can see on the attached image, I have highlighted a box which is inside a sphere, and also there is a tube going through the sphere.

How would I procedurally remove the box and keep the sphere and cylinder ?

Houdini file attached.

EDIT: Came to the conclusion that you can assume that the sphere is in a group, so I have updated the example file to better reflect the situation.

You can click on the boxes bypass flag ( it's the furthest flag on the left of the box object - bypass flag turns yellow when it is on )

BabaJ
You can click on the boxes bypass flag ( it's the furthest flag on the left of the box object - bypass flag turns yellow when it is on )

Ofcourse, but that's not very procedural. I want to detect any loose geo inside the sphere and delete it. This is a simplified setup to illustrate what I want todo.

Instead of deleting it…maybe do something like create a group node between merge and sphere and one between merge and cylinder….then whatever you do after merge only use( select ) the names of the two groups…whatever may be “loose geo” won't be included…effectively deleting it.

If you have a complex process in which you not sure where the “loose geo” is coming from, maybe retrace your steps back to the beginning and for each node have a look at the spreedsheet to see what it getting generated…then maybe you can figure out a way to sort your process with the use of other nodes like maybe the group node for example.

BabaJ
Instead of deleting it…maybe do something like create a group node between merge and sphere and one between merge and cylinder….then whatever you do after merge only use( select ) the names of the two groups…whatever may be “loose geo” won't be included…effectively deleting it.

If you have a complex process in which you not sure where the “loose geo” is coming from, maybe retrace your steps back to the beginning and for each node have a look at the spreedsheet to see what it getting generated…then maybe you can figure out a way to sort your process with the use of other nodes like maybe the group node for example.

If it was this simple I would not have asked the question. And it can't be backtraced to earlier in the graph. I am searching for a way to identify lose geo inside other geo without any previous indications such as a group.

Perhaps you could provide more details of what the situation is?

BabaJ
Perhaps you could provide more details of what the situation is?

Actually come to think of it, you could assume one thing, that the sphere is in a group. I've added that to the test scene here.

Perhaps that will help.

Think of it as forLoop clipping over a split up mesh, which is then merged with the sphere and you need to remove things that are entierly inside the sphere, but not the ones sticking out.

There is a bounding box option on the group node and it also has a sub-option for points only.

I tried playing around with it…along with add and resample nodes ( to try and work with points only ) and didn't have any luck.

I suspect it would be a combination of those nodes along with some of the nodes in the modily shelf like “copy to points” , “combine”, etc.

sorry…couldn't help.

BabaJ
There is a bounding box option on the group node and it also has a sub-option for points only.

I tried playing around with it…along with add and resample nodes ( to try and work with points only ) and didn't have any luck.

I suspect it would be a combination of those nodes along with some of the nodes in the modily shelf like “copy to points” , “combine”, etc.

sorry…couldn't help.

Well that's allright. thank you for trying. I should perhaps say I already have a working solution. I was just curious to see if there is a better solution than mine.

BabaJ, you may not have solved it, but your words inspired me and I came up with a solution based on groups. Im posting a file with my old solution and the new one inspired by you.
I think the new one is rather fail safe compared to my old one.

I did a slightly more straight forward way using a python node,

it groups all points in the bounds tab of the group sop, then the python counts the total points in each geo, if it matches, it deletes


note: please ignore the extra assemble node, I derped

Nice one Mike !