Each time I install an update to the SideFX Labs stuff I lose any new desktops or shelf changes I've made. This seems to be because it's loading/saving from/to a path with the SideFX labs version number in it, for example:

d:/gray/Documents/Houdini18.0/SideFXLabs/310/…etc.

How do I stop this behaviour so that Desktops and Shelves etc. are saved and automatically loaded from another location? Any solution needs to make sure the SideFX Labs stuff remains useable.

thanks, Gray - H18.287 Win 10

I experienced something like this, but I don't remember which exact steps I followed to solve it. It involved grabbing the preference files wrongly stored to houdini18.0/SideFXLabs/version/ and putting them on houdini18.0/. After this, Houdini went back to storing preference changes in the usual place.

Since then I switched to manually installing and updating Labs in a different path, outside the user preferences directory.

I know this isn't very specific, but I hope it can help.

There is now a fix for this, according to the changelog:

Houdini 18.0.398 - Fix computing HOUDINI_USER_PREF_DIR so that installing SideFXLabs will no longer cause shelves, desktops, etc to be saved inside the SideFXLabs subdirectory in some situations. Items erroneously saved there may need to be moved to their correct location.