Maybe I can clarify a few things:

1. I think it is important to also show helper nodes. In the basic simple case this leads to only showing the widget planes but in other scenarios helper nodes might be important to inspect. However, we could think about adding a checkbox inside a node-selection dialog to show / hide helper nodes, if the list of nodes is too long in scenarios with many helper nodes.

2. The automatic selection of nodes when the plugin view is opened works such that a "selected" node in the data manager is used for the selection widget. However, it does not work like e.g. the Segmentation View selection widgets were a node is always selected, also upon opening the view. We can add this by adding m_Controls.singleSlot->SetAutoSelectNewNodes(true); I propose not to do this since this will lead to the issue mentioned in T29140: [Selection widget] Optional selection can not be removed if a fitting node is always found. So either allowing auto select but removing optional mode or leave it as it is.