Dock (Almost) Any Floating Window in Maya 2011 and Above

Quick tip to dock your floating windows in Maya (requires later Qt versions). Find the name of your active windows in Maya by entering this in the MEL command line:

lsUI -windows;

Within that list is all the active windows. With the Script Editor and PoseMan open, the returned result is // Result: MayaWindow window1 scriptEditorPanel1Window //

So we can assume PoseMan is window1. Plug the window name into the following code, with the last two words representing the window name and the unique dock name, and save it to a shell or hotkey:

dockControl -area top -content window1 poseman;

and voilà:

From then on the name “poseman” from the script will appear in your UI docks when you right click docked tabs:

It can be closed and reopened from there.

This isn’t without flaws, unfortunately. Some windows don’t work right when you dock them and PoseMan is one that you have to be careful with by loading pose files before docking or else it won’t be able to find the parent window. I also say “almost” any window in the title because some apps like V-Ray’s VFB are not MEL/Python windows, they are Qt based and it doesn’t work for those. Still, it can be handy.

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