I was watching a video by Chris Rydalch. Very good btw. However, there is a section where he is showing how to connect a primitive into the the Component Output within a USD workflow. He connects a primitive into a sphere into a Component Output. Looks easy enough, but not so much. Doesn't work as smoothly as in the video. Any ideas what I'm missing. Here is a link https://youtu.be/EgTqz6y_oAs?t=2714 [youtu.be]

Can you be more specific about what's happening that you didn't expect?

Totally blind guess: did you remember to set the Source to "Input Primitives"?