Hello-
It's only my second day using Houdini, and I have a question which is probably very basic. What is the best approach when you want an object to contain other objects?

For example, I may want to create an airplane which consists of a fuselage, wing, etc. For a very simple airplane I would start with boxes, one for the wing, one for the fuselage, etc. I can see them in the scene view and in the network view. I have changed their names accordingly.

Now I want to combine all these elements and call them “airplane.” What is the best way to do that? Some kind of grouping? Or would “airplane” be a node which contains the other nodes? Or do these boxes define the geometry of the airplane in some way? Or do I simply connect the nodes to each other in the node view?

Or do I create a geometry node, and then drill down into it and add the fuselage, wings, etc.? (I tried this and couldn't get it to work. The fuselage and wings appeared at the top level, and not inside the airplane.)

The idea is that I could then add terrain, clouds, etc., and move the airplane around. I realize it's very basic stuff, and I'm embarrassed that I don't know how to proceed. Is there a video which shows this kind of work flow?
-Scott

I found a video which describes creating a table with four legs, maybe I'm on the right track…

while there is no single answer to your question as it depends on various decisions
if you simply want to have a single Object which contains geometry of all the objects you've already created on object level, you can just use Combine tool from Modify Shelf

or just select your objects, hit TAB with your mouse over object level viewport, type Combine, enter

Ah, the combine tool. Thanks Thomas. -Scott