I was I went through a couple forum post with similar issue but couldn't find the fix yet. Here are the steps I went through: 1. Settings -> project interpreter -> Base interpreter as C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini 17.0.352\python27 2. After the project interpreter is setup, add the path C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini 17.0.352\houdini\python2.7libs to the interpreter Path
For me, to use hou module outside of Houdini, it was enough to add $HFS/bin to PATH and add $HFS/houdini/python2.7libs to PYTHONPATH. This will work on win and linux. And this will not work on macOS due to different rpath logic, you will have to use hython or manually adding a needed path to the list of RPATH's in Houdini's libraries