Creating Tools on the Shelf using HOM

[Jason]

Hi there,

Before rooting through the docs to find out how to do it, has anyone created Tools on the Shelves using HOM? I have a reason to want to populate a Shelf with some tools procedurally:)

Anyone have example code of this?

Thanks all

Jason

[graham]

I was skeptical at first but some quick investigation has proven it is indeed possible.

You can access all the Shelves, Shelf Sets and tool stuff through the hou.shelves submodule. From there I was able to create a new shelf, create new tools and add them to this shelf.

My current shelf set is the Technical Director one so the following code uses it. Others can be accessed from hou.shelves.shelfSets()

td = hou.shelves.shelfSets()["shelf_set_td"]

my_shelf = hou.shelves.newShelf("/tmp/my_shelf.shelf", "my_shelf", "My Cool Shelf")

my_tool = hou.shelves.newTool("/tmp/my_tool.shelf", "my_tool", "Print kwargs", script="print kwargs")
# The function to add a tool to the shelf takes a tuple/list so you are best off creating all your tools and adding them at once.  If
# you don't want to do that you can do something involving lists like myshelf.setTools(list(myshelf.tools()) + [tool1, tool2, etc])
my_shelf.setTools((my_tool,))
# The same must be done with hou.ShelfSet.setShelves.  Another example of using lists that you could do for a loop.   You can get a dictionary of every tool available in Houdini by doing hou.shelves.tools().  This allows you to use existing tools you might have already written as long as they are located in the HOUDINI_PATH.
td_shelves = list(td.shelves())
td_shelves.append(my_shelf)
td.setShelves(td_shelves)

Voila. My Cool Shelf with a Print kwargs tool on it. Hope that helps

Edited March 1, 2009 by graham

[graham]

Another quick bit, I must thank Jason for asking the question as I think it's helped me uncover a rather annoying permission error/crash with editing shelves on the Mac build.

[Jason]

Another quick bit, I must thank Jason for asking the question as I think it's helped me uncover a rather annoying permission error/crash with editing shelves on the Mac build.

Any time, and I must thank YOU profusely for posting this example:) You should wiggle it into the HOM Cookbook, or something like it!

[graham]

I'll see what I can do

[sibarrick]

I would never even have thought of doing this. Crazy! you could have a shelf tool that creates itself on the shelf, pretty soon emergent life will evolve.....

(I'll get back on my meds now)

[edward]

So who's doing the first shelf tool that emulates an animated LED board on the shelf itself?

[Jason]

So who's doing the first shelf tool that emulates an animated LED board on the shelf itself?

This kinda whackness is reserved for Jens. http://forums.odforce.net/index.php?showtopic=839&hl=

PS. Shield your eyes, H8 interface!