Maya has many more shelves than the ones displayed by default in the user interface. If you want to use a shelf that does not appear in the UI, click the Shelf icon 
, and select Load Shelf. The Load Shelf window opens, showing the contents of the runtime/script/shelf directory.
Maya for Windows and Mac OS X includes default shelves with buttons for commonly used features.
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.
To add default shelves to Maya on Linux
- Open the Script Editor (Window > General Editors > Script Editor).
- To load all shelves, copy the following script 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.
loadNewShelf "shelf_General.mel"; loadNewShelf "shelf_Curves.mel"; loadNewShelf "shelf_Surfaces.mel"; loadNewShelf "shelf_Polygons.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;