Jonathan Mack

Do the particles have an orientation?

You don't have to do anything, because that is how it is intended to work. If autotakes is being enabled without your action, then it is a malfunction.

Midphase
Which version of RS are you using? The newer versions can work with packed geometry so I don't think you need to convert packed primitives to proxies anymore. You could use Instances instead, and there are a few tutorials that deal with that including this one:

https://www.sidefx.com/tutorials/height-field-scatter-h175/ [www.sidefx.com]

Still needs to be a mesh though, I don't think any renderers, apart from mantra, support rendering heightfield volumes as-is.