The Plug-in Manager lets you manage plug-ins dynamically without any initialization required. The Plug-in Manager provides a list of all plug-ins found in the 3ds Max plug-in directories, including the plug-in description, type (object, helper, modifier, and so on), status (loaded or deferred), size, and path. The Plug-in Manager provides options to load or tag as deferred, any particular plug-in, regardless where they reside on disk.
When you start the Plug-in Manager, it scans through all the plug-in paths specified in the plug-in.ini file and lists them in the Plug-in Manager dialog.
Actually there are two different FP interfaces in the plug-in manager, one is an action interface accessed through Plugin_manager and the other one is a static interface called pluginManager.
You can access the static interface using
pluginManager.show = true
or
pluginManager.loadClass Flex
Methods
pluginManager.visible = true --show
pluginManager.visible = false --hide
Show and hide the plug-in manager.
pluginManager.loadClass <class>
Will ensure that the given class is loaded, in the event that it is a deferred loading class, and so any MAXScript methods or Function Published interfaces it publishes will be available.
Example:
pluginManager.loadClass Flex
After this code is executed, all the Flex modifier MAXScript methods are installed and callable.
Note
This is only needed in situations where a plug-in loading may be deferred and it does not have any instances already in the current scene.
See also