Friday 13 January 2012

Maya: Window display issues - "...Panel is torn off."

This seems to be a frequent problem, in which some people result in doing a complete reinstall!.

Problem:
Cant show my graph editor/outliner/etc window, keeps telling me "... Panel is torn off."

What this typically means is that somewhere along the line the window has been placed off-screen, usually happens when users either switch monitors around or remove a monitor.
A few very simple fixes, and any one of them should solve your problem.

1.  You can reset your maya's window preferences simply by deleting the "windowPrefs.mel" located in your maya prefs folder ("USER\My Documents\maya\2011-x64\prefs\") whilst maya is CLOSED. Dont worry, once opening maya again, it will automatically create the "windowPrefs.mel" file again, all windows should now load at their default position.
2. You can edit the "windowPrefs.mel" file, to tell maya where to place the windows, just open it in a text editor (notepad usually does the trick, and again whilst maya is closed), and for each window you'll see a "-topLeftCorner" flag with 2 numbers after it. Change them to something like 10 10, save the mel file and load maya.
3. If you only have 1 rogue window you can use mel to reposition the window (you will of course need to know the name of the window, found when trying to load the window - as long as you have "Echo all commands" ticked on in the script editor)
window -e -tlc 10 10 "graphEditor1Window" ;
Now depending on the window your trying to reposition, the naming convention might differ from ending in "Window" or "Panel#Window" ("#" is the number id of the window, typically its 1).
Again, any questions etc, please feel free to comment.

7 comments:

  1. Thanks for the tip.
    Do you know how to select the HyperShape window.
    I tried a few different ways and it didn't come up.
    hyperShadePanel; Hypershade; Hypershade1Window etc.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Replies
    1. Thanks for the reply. I'll definitely give it a shot on Monday.

      Delete
    2. np, just checked and,
      window -e -tlc 10 10 hyperShadePanel1Window ;
      will move the hypershade window in place (tested on 2011)

      Delete
  3. Exactly what I needed thanks.

    It's kind of unbelievable that there isn't a menu option to rescue stray panes. I expect someone has written a script that somewhere that checks for all torn off panes and resets them to the main screen.

    ReplyDelete
  4. click the menu tear off panel you want an then strait away hit WIN key and left arrow - this brings the window from off screen using AERO - Window 7-8 fix

    ReplyDelete
  5. thX god u save me all the day , i can finally do my work

    ReplyDelete