autodesk offers a cool set of bonus tools for maya which you should definitely install as they extend the package by a lot of time savers in all areas. the tricky thing is to get them running! i had some installation issues and as i digged through several forums i saw that a lot of other users do have the same kind of problem after installation: the bonus tools menu just doesn’t show up at all. this is how i could fix it:
first copy the file bonusTools.txt in C:\Program Files\Autodesk\MayaBonusTools2008\modules to C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2008\modules. now open this file in a text editor and change the settings according to your operating system (create the folder if it doesn’t exit yet). i’m using windows vista, so it is:
+ bonusTools 2008 C:\Program Files\Autodesk\MayaBonusTools2008\BonusTools
if you start maya now, you can type in the mel command line:
bonusToolsmenu;
but i wanted to have this menu show up automatically; so open the userSetup.mel in C:\Users\yourUsername\Documents\maya\2008\prefs\scripts. if it doesn’t exist, create it. type in the same command as mentioned above and save it. i also recommend to turn on toggle menu style, so it only shows the entries dependent which mode you are in (like animation, polygons etc.). you’re done – enjoy the new & powerful features.