Maya provides several ways that you can edit deformer set membership:
You can edit deformer set membership with the Relationship Editor (Windows > Relationship Editors > Deformer Sets). The Relationship Editor lists all the deformer sets in your scene, and lists all the points in each set. With the Relationship Editor, you can also provide for exclusive deformer set membership so that a point can be in only one set.
You can directly edit deformer set memberships by picking deformable object points with the Edit Membership Tool (Deform > Edit > Edit Membership Tool). See Edit deformer set membership.
You can also paint deformer set memberships with the Paint Set Membership Tool. This tool provides an intuitive, easy-to-use way to edit set membership - see Paint deformer set membership.
For the cluster, sculpt, lattice, and wire deformers, you can quickly prune all points from the deformer set - see Prune deformer set membership.
The Exclusive option helps you to create non-overlapping deformations by ensuring that the sets belonging to each deformer are mutually exclusive. See Advanced deformer options.
The mutual exclusivity of the deformers is accomplished by placing the deformer’s sets into a partition. The partition guarantees that the sets will continue to be mutually exclusive even if you edit the membership of the sets. To put deformer sets into a partition, use the Relationship Editor. For more information see Sets and partitions.