Changing Panel Defaults

[Anonymous]

Greetings All!

Noob to Maya here. 

I've got a dual-monitor setup.

My left-side monitor generally shows Maya's main self-contained interface (viewports, toolbars, attribute editor, etc.)

Upon opening specific .ma or ,mb files, by default, a half-dozen or so panels will appear on my right-side monitor. (Outliner, Hypergraph, Dope Sheet, etc.)

I'd like to know how/where to set defaults so that only specific, desired panels appear when I open a Maya file, and also how I can save a current state as the  default.

Thanks again!

NF

[mspeer]

Hi!

For Maya Versions from 2017 upwards you can use Workspaces to set and re-set the panels you want, but you can't prevent the opening from panels saved inside an older scene-file before Maya 2017 (and before Workspaces).

[Anonymous]

Hi mspeer

Thanks for tip about Workspaces and Maya 2017 & later. I should have mentioned that I'm working in Maya 2015, and on MacOS (if that makes any difference).

I was hoping to get an answer about what triggers the behavior of Panels appearing, besides manually going into the 'Windows' menu and initiating them there. I did a quick behavior test to try to answer my own question:

• Maya will save your visible panels as Scene data, so whatever Panels you have open when you last saved the file will appear whenever you load the scene again.
• However, if you are already running a Scene with some open Panels (scene A), and you decide to load up a different scene (scene B),  Maya will open Panels that were saved to scene B, and then cumulatively hold on to the Panels that visible were visible in scene A. 

This is convenient sometimes, and other times not so much, so I would wonder if there was anyway to override this (without a custom script), so that Maya kills any Panels that were open from previous scene. 

Thanks again!

[mspeer · Accepted solution]

Hi!

"I would wonder if there was anyway to override this (without a custom script), so that Maya kills any Panels that were open from previous scene."

You may try different settings in the Preferences, for example:

http://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2015/ENU/?guid=GUID-B67AE9E4-83EA-444F-AC8A-13DB57BC65BB