I'm trying to understand the component geometry lop and I'm having trouble figuring out what is happening if we set source to file mode. If I read usd files they don't show up in the viewport or scene graph. If I inspect the code in the layer it generates I see no indication to it being loaded or referenced.

So, what am I expecting to see when loading usd files? I was imagining the loaded model in the scene but perhaps my understanding of it is lacking.

File mode is just a shortcut for a File SOP. It expects something you'd load with that, like a bgeo.
Component Builder is a way of taking non-USD geometry and "packing" it into an USD asset (together with materials, variants, etc).

Hello!

This video might be useful:

https://youtu.be/EgTqz6y_oAs?t=1186 [youtu.be]

Cheers!

Thanks all. So, my mistake was that I assumed it would take usd files but it only works with bgeo (not even alembics). It might be useful if sidefx would mention it in the docs or throw a warning/error. I can unlock the node and fix it but since everything everywhere in Solaris is about usd files it would be cool if this was working with usd out of the box.

FWIW you can just use the USD Import SOP inside the componentgeometry node (make sure to unpack to polys).