Every time I re-ope a file after it has been closed that has imported geometry houdini can't find it even though its in the same directory as always.. is there a way that I can make an imported piece of geometry permanently part of the houdini file so I don't have to manually select it each time I open a file?

You could lock your file node that is reading in the geometry.

I've had this before too.

Locking the node will do it, but will make your hip file larger (how large depends on how detailed the topology of the locked geo is).

Does quickly hitting bypass and unbypass on the node not work? I seem to remember that working for me in the past. Not really a solution I know..

rdane1010
Every time I re-ope a file after it has been closed that has imported geometry houdini can't find it even though its in the same directory as always.. is there a way that I can make an imported piece of geometry permanently part of the houdini file so I don't have to manually select it each time I open a file?

Out of curiosity, what file format did you use for the imported geometry?

Basically, what should happen is this:
1) If you lock the File SOPs, the geometry will be stored with the hip file itself, and the original file you imported is no longer needed. As was mentioned, this will make your hip file larger.

2) If you don't lock the node, the geometry should be there, provided the path in the File SOP is correct. If it's not loading, something is off, and you may consider logging a bug after verifying that the file path is right.

I'm using both .obj and .iges and it happens for both of these.. the locking of the file seems to prevent it so far.. thanks for the advice on that.. the path is right but I usually save the file to a place outside the default place that houdini seems to look for files so maybe thats the issue… I'd prefer actually to make it part of the file so its fine that it makes the filesize larger.