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. But the tricky thing is to get them running!
I had some installation issues and as I dug 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 the way I could fix the installation problems:
After you have installed the bonus tools regularly via the installer, proceed with the following steps: 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.
Note: Using the latest Maya 2011 now, installing the bonus tools is a smooth experience now and I experienced no issues – so no manual editing of configuration files necessary any more.