Switches and loops

[willrmiller]

Hello,

I have a situation where I need to apply the same operations to several discrete pieces of geometry which will later be exported as separate files.  To save myself some network duplication, I thought I might be able to collect all of these pieces into a switch and iterate over them in a for-loop.  I can't figure out how exactly to make this work.  Is there a better way?  (image illustrates what I'm going for)

Thanks for the help!

[3dome]

the way i did it in the past was to give each piece of geometry a discrete attribute (name, number, etc), collect them in a merge SOP and then run my loop with that attribute.
if you have a lot of inputs, you might want to use python to automate that primwrangle creation

[Noobini]

isn't it this simple ?

ForSwitch.hiplc

[anim]

if you want to process them separately and save as different files anyway, you can just use Wedge SOP and control switch value with $WEDGENUM variable, then have any sops after switch to process your geo and ROP Geometry Output (referenced in wedge driver) that will save your geo with path varying using $WEDGE variable  

https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/nodes/out/wedge.html

[willrmiller]

Thank you so much for the help. I tried both of these methods (merge + named primitives and using a wedge) and they both work.  My specific situation called for a different solution, because I needed to force a heightfield erode recalculation and export the resulting maps in each iteration.  To do this, I wrote a little Python in the session module:

def renderTerrain():
    for i in range(0, 13):
        hou.node("obj/Terrain/Controller").parm("shape_index").set(i)
        hou.node("obj/Terrain/heightfield_erode1").parm("resimulate").pressButton()
        hou.node("obj/Terrain/heightfield_output1").parm("execute").pressButton()

Here, the Controller node's shape_index parameter is referenced in the switch.  I could improve this further by replacing the hard-coded loop range with a count fetched from the switch.

EDIT: @Noobini your solution works well too.  Very simple!

Edited October 28, 2018 by willrmiller

[Radivarig]

@Noobini in your example you can also use opninputs("../switch1") for Iterations in foreach_end1 to iterate over all switch inputs automatically.

[acey195]

Depending on what you are doing in the loop.
if the logic is going to be "compilable",

You can also look into the "Invoke" SOP

that is a way of reusing a part of network, with a different input (generating a different output)
but it only works together with a compiled block as a reference.