When you select faces in Maya the default method is to click the dot in the center of a face to select it. You can change this behavior so you can click anywhere on a face to select it.
To change the face selection preference
The Keep Faces Together setting (Edit Mesh > Keep Faces Together) controls how Maya treats the edges of adjacent faces. Turn Keep Faces Together on or off while you are extruding, extracting, or duplicating faces to specify whether you want to retain the edges of each face or the border edges. When this option is on, Maya automatically sets the option in the Attribute Editor and Channel Box for Extrude, Duplicate Face, and Extract.
When Keep Faces Together is off, each edge makes a wall as it is extruded. Duplicated faces are duplicated separately, and extracted faces are extracted separately. The faces separate from each other and scale from their own center.
When Keep Faces Together is on, only the border edges make walls as they are extruded, extracted, or duplicated. Faces connected by their edges create a single tube, with the connected faces as a single roof.
You can specify whether polygon meshes are double-sided or single-sided in Maya by selecting Window > Settings/Preferences > Preferences and selecting the Modeling category. Turn on Create meshes single sided if you want new polygonal meshes to be created single-sided. The default is off.
When this is turned on, new polygonal meshes (for example, created by the polygon primitive tools or by polygonal operations) automatically have their Render Stats > Double Sided attribute turned off.
You can specify whether Maya automatically converts an existing selection to the correct component selection for an action. Select Window > Settings/Preferences > Preferences and select the Modeling category to view the Convert component selection setting. This setting is on by default.
Turn on Convert component selection to have Maya automatically convert an object selection to the appropriate component selection mode if an action works only on components.
For example, if you select a polygonal object and try to extrude faces, Maya will automatically select all the faces on the object and proceed.
When Convert Selection is turned off, operations work at the object level. If this is not appropriate for the operation, Maya will print the following message:
Warning: Try turning the Polygons->ToolOptions-> ConvertSelection ON.
The Smart Command Settings modifies polygon settings based on the kind of action being performed:
The Smart Command Settings is off by default and can be turned on by selecting Window > Settings/Preferences > Preferences and selecting the Modeling category.
After performing an operation, you can reset the display settings by selecting Display > Polygons > Reset Display. You will need to manually reset the selection mask.
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