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Topics

UI/Scene Management   /  UI Elements: Status Line : Point the most important buttons on the Status Line like the Creat New, Open Scene and Save Scene button, the object mode button, the construction history button,render current frame button and the attribute editor, tool settings and channel box button.

AutoDesk Help:

  Status Line 

The menus in Maya are grouped into menu sets. Each menu set corresponds to a module of the software: Animation, Polygons, Surfaces, Dynamics, Rendering, and nDynamics. As you switch between menu sets, the right-hand menus change, but the left-hand menus remain the same; these are the common menus.

To switch between menu sets, use the Status Line drop-down list or hotkeys. The default hotkeys are: F2 (Animation), F3 (Polygons), F4 (Surfaces), F5 (Dynamics), F6 ( Rendering).

You can create custom menu sets that contain your choice of menu items. For more information, see Custom menu sets.

Tear-off menus

You can display menus as separate windows. This is helpful when you use a menu repeatedly. Pull down the menu and click the tear-off line at the top. Tear-off menus always display on top.

To use a tool

1. Do one of the following:
   • Click a tool in the Tool Box to make it active.
   • Double-click a tool to show the Tool Settings panel.

To use an action (menu item)

1. Do one of the following
   • Click a menu item to perform the action on the selected objects or components.

   Some actions work differently depending on the order you select the objects. For example, you select all the objects you want to constrain, and then select the object to constrain to last when you create a constraint.

   The help line for an action tells you the order you need to select objects if order is important.

   • Click the box next to the name of a menu item to open the action’s options window.
   • Click the lines at the top of a menu or submenu to keep the menu open in its own window.

Open Scene and Save Scene button

These are the we links to learn.

• Supported file formats
• Create, open, or save a scene file
• Recover data after a crash
• Work with proxy references
• File > Save Scene As
• File > Export All, Export Selection

File > Save Scene >

Incremental save

When Incremental Save is turned on and you save the scene, a backup folder by the same name is created in the scenes\incrementalsave folder and a backup is made of the file that was previously saved to disk. Each time you save, another backup file is created. These backup files are incremental (filename.001.mb, filename.002.mb) so the previous backup is not overwritten. The number of incremental backups created is infinite by default.

Limit incremental saves

Applies a limit to the number of incremental backup files that Maya creates and stores. The default limit is 20 increments.

Number of increments

Type a value or drag the slider to specify a limit.