The Max Toolbox is an extremely elegant and handy tool for speeding up your Max programming. It’s a javascript based tool that helps you distribute, organize and connect your objects. Let’s say that you for instance want to connect 25 sound file players to a single start message. In the old days that would mean patching up 25 cables. That’s clicking dragging and releasing 25 times. With the Max Toolbox, this can be done with just selecting the objects and pressing one shortcut! My God. I wish I had installed this aaaaages ago.

An example: All the connections made in this patch were done by just selecting twice and pushing two keys (a and q).

The shortcuts are as follows (after selecting your objects):

multiple to single – a
single to multiple – q
row to single – s
single to row – w
row to row – e
connect cascade – shift-c

vertical distribution – select and drag while holding x
horisontal – select and drag while holding y

You can also select objects, and send them messages with the Max Toolbox command line (shift – r). You can give the selected objects a name by giving an @name message.

Using the command line you can also do some more advandced stuff, like connect from outlet 2 in one object to inlet 4 in several objects. This can be done by writing @sm o 2 i 4.

I will add these to the Max shortcuts post: http://ola.teks.no/blog/?p=1299

The downside using the Max Toolbox is program stability. I’ve experienced more crashes lately, probably due to the Max Toolbox. So remember to save often.

Check out the handy features of the Max Toolbox in this video: