The Shelf and Creating a New Shelf

Figure 1 - the Shelf

When you probably first started Maya, you may have noticed that even though you can create a polygonal sphere from Maya's main menu, you could also just click on a button on the Shelf (see Figure 1) to create one, as well.

But did you know that you can actually add custom buttons to the Shelf?

Creating a shelf button for tasks and commands that you do regularly throughout your workflow can be a huge timesaver and incredibly easy to do.

There are 2 parts to this process:

1. Decide which shelf you want to add your MEL command - or create a new Shelf, altogether.
2. Adding the MEL command to the Shelf

The Shelf

If you don't see the Shelf in Maya's interface, you can activate it in Maya's main menu (see Figure 2 ):

    Display > UI Elements > Shelf

Figure 2 - Displaying the Shelf

Creating a new Shelf

1.  Along the Shelf, at the far left, there's an icon with a downward-pointing arrow (see Figure 3). 

Figure 3 - Shelf Icon

 

2.  With your left mouse button, click & hold over the downward-pointing arrow icon.

3.  A dialog box will pop up, but will disappear if you release your mouse button's hold.

4.  Click on the option, "New Shelf"

5.  A dialog box will appear, prompting you to enter the name of the new shelf we are creating (see Figure 4).

Figure 4 - Dialog box to name the new Shelf

 

6.  For now, let's give it the name, "Custom", but you can give it any name you wish.

7.  click "Ok".

Creating a new shelf means we don't have to clutter the other default Maya shelves. Not to mention, its a great way to keep our shelf buttons organized once you become a MEL guru and start writing all kinds of different custom MEL commands and scripts.

Next Blog Post:

Let's add a MEL command to the Shelf.