I'm working with an architectural model FBX that was handed to me by a client. Unfortunately, the instances are merged into a single mesh. I'd like to find a way to recognize repeating meshes and replace them with instances in Houdini.

I discovered the Find Instances [www.sidefx.com] node. From the sound of it, it seems to do what I'm looking for but I have not been able to get it to work.

Can someone take a look at the HIP file I am sending here? If my understanding is correct, I should be able to get instance points from a merged piece of geometry using this node. Please correct me if I am mistaken.

Thanks!

You have a name attribute on the incoming geometry - this is used to identify each piece to match to an instance. Since all the cubes have the name "box" and the spheres "sphere", they'll be treated as only 2 separate pieces.
Drop an attribute delete before the geo plugged into the Find Instances SOP and it'll find the instances as you'd expect.

Middle click on the node - it tells you how many unique prototypes and how many instances it has detected.

By default, the Mode is set to "Extract and Instance" - this creates the unique prototypes and copies them where needed.
To output the prototypes out of the first output and the instance points out of the second output, set the Mode to "Extract Prototypes". You can use the "Copy Instances" quick setup to set this up for you as well as a pre-configured Copy to Points SOP.