Maya Override Drag & Drop Behavior

A friend of mine recently pointed out that you can change the default behavior of Maya's drag and drop files. I generally have not used this workflow but upon changing how it handles the open conditions, I have found drag and dropping far more useful recently.




I have changed the local Maya file performFileDropAction.mel, from exclusively choosing to do a file import, to giving the user the options they wish to perform.

You can find the original file in  C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya20XX\scripts\others\performFileAction.mel

Proper Distribution:

The best implementation of this updated procedure would of course be to package the modified code into a module. This is a far more reasonable approach for distribution if you need to roll out to a team. If you need more information on this process, check out Steve Theodore's article on Maya modules.

http://techartsurvival.blogspot.com/2014/01/mayas-mildy-magical-modules.html

Here is a brief walk through of how the new behavior works & the updated code can be found below.

	// Randall Hess randall.hess@gmail.com
	// Instructions: Copy this file over your local maya version to override the default behavior
	// Maya 2022 and Higher
	// Additional: You can also build and load this as a module and not overwrite the local maya file.
	// Location: C:\Program Files\Autodesk\MayaXX\scripts\others\performFileDropAction.mel
	global proc int
	performFileDropAction (string $theFile)
	{
	string $msg = "Would you like to Import, Open or Reference the file?";
	string $import = "Import";
	string $open = "Open";
	string $reference = "Reference";
	string $cancel = "Cancel";
	string $response = `confirmDialog -message $msg -button $import -button $open -button $reference -button $cancel -defaultButton $cancel`;
	if ($response == $cancel)
	{
	return(1);
	}
	else if ($response == $open)
	{
	global string $gOperationMode;
	string $save_gOperationMode = $gOperationMode;
	$gOperationMode = "Open";
	int $result = performFileAction ($theFile, 1, "");
	$gOperationMode = $save_gOperationMode;
	return ($result);
	}
	else if ($response == $import)
	{
	file -import -namespace (basenameEx($theFile)) $theFile ;
	return(1);
	}
	else if ($response == $reference)
	{
	file -reference -namespace (basenameEx($theFile)) $theFile ;
	return(1);
	}
	}

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