Linear Falloff HDA with Handles and Guide Geometry

[ikoon]

I just made my first HDA I have also used custom Handle and Guide Geometry to easily animate and preview.
I hope you will like it, but also you may experience some difficulties using it, as I am still newbie.

My questions:

The Ramp
- adding new ramppoints and renaming the node itself is tricky ... please, how do you bind VOP to HDA?
- problem is, that new points have relative path ch("../../linear1/values_ramp4value") instead of simple ch("../values_ramp4pos")
HDAs:
- please, is it good practice to save all my HDAs here? C:\Users\..user..\Documents\houdini16.0\otls // yes it is
- I should add parameters only in the "Type Properties", right? Not in the "Edit Parameter Interface" //  yes
- is it good practice to have some string parameter "Output Attribute Name" and then use "Set Attribute VOP"? // yes, I am also experimenting with chs("") and then vex include with backticks

VOPs:
- is it better to use Get Attribute or the Import Point Attribute? Both work well. More here http://bit.ly/2s2TGLO
- inside an IF block, I output values to Cd to preview them ... and even when the IF should be skipped, Cd gets default values // that is probably ok and inevitable, there is some slight performance loss, I will experiment with chs() and include
 

linear.hdalc

Edited June 22, 2017 by ikoon
questions answered

[ikoon]

Some time has passed, I have answered my questions above. I am also slowly rebuilding the HDA in vex, also to accept @attributes in the inputs, instead of just numbers.

Please, I am still struggling with the ramp interface. There is a ramp inside HDA (on one VOP) and I promote that ramp to the HDA interface. It often happens (when unlocking), that the points on the ramp mismatch paths, new points have relative path ch("../../linear1/values_ramp4pos") instead of simple ch("../values_ramp4pos").  linear1 is the implicit name of the hda, similarly to box1... Please, do you have any bulletproof practice to promote ramps?