Maya for Windows and Mac OS X include default shelves with buttons for commonly used features. The shelves are: Animation, Curves, Custom, Deformation, Dynamics, Fluids, Fur, General, Hair, Paint Effects, Polygons, Rendering, Subdivs, and Surfaces.

Maya does not include the shelves in Linux because they can slow the startup time on those platforms. However you can use the following instructions to load them.

1. Open the Script Editor (Window > General Editors > Script Editor).
2. To load all shelves, copy the following and paste it into the Script Editor window, then select Command > Execute. (Select only some shelves from the list below if you do not want to load them all by default.)

loadNewShelf "shelf_General.mel";
loadNewShelf "shelf_Curves.mel";
loadNewShelf "shelf_Surfaces.mel";
loadNewShelf "shelf_Polygons.mel";
loadNewShelf "shelf_Subdivs.mel";
loadNewShelf "shelf_Deformation.mel";
loadNewShelf "shelf_Animation.mel";
loadNewShelf "shelf_Dynamics.mel";
loadNewShelf "shelf_Rendering.mel";
loadNewShelf "shelf_Fluids.mel";
loadNewShelf "shelf_Fur.mel";
loadNewShelf "shelf_Hair.mel";
saveAllShelves $gShelfTopLevel;