Creating your own custom shelf with your own tools while working in Maya is one of the things that speeds up your workflow.

However, sometimes we can switch to another shelf to use a tool that is not available on our own shelf, and we need to click through the shelf tab to return to our own shelf. We can complete this process in a much shorter time by assigning a shortcut to the Python code below.

First things first

First of all, open the hotkey editor via Windows > Settings/Preferences > Hotkey Editor.

Then, if it does not exist, click on the gear icon next to the Hotkey Set option and create a new hotkey set by clicking Duplicate, then name your Hotkey Set.

After that, click the Runtime Command Editor tab, then click New button. Fields below will be available to use. Name your custom script, then add a description if you want, then you can paste the codes below to the text field. Remember to choose Python from the Language select option.

Don’t forget to change “shelf_name” value to your own custom shelf name!

After all, click Save Runtime Command button to save it. Your new script will be saved to your Hotkey Set. Now click it from the left panel, and give it a shortcut. With this shortcut, you can now switch to your custom shelf while you are in another shelf.