Max ToolBox Readme PDF
Max ToolBox Readme PDF
Max ToolBox Readme PDF
By Nathanaël Lécaudé
maxtoolbox@studioimaginaire.com
The Max Toolbox was designed with the idea of automating and enhancing the process of patch
editing within Max/MSP/Jitter.
You will need to take all the files except ToolBox.pat and put them in a directory that is listed in
your search paths. It is strongly recommended to put the ToolBox.pat file in your Extras directory
so you have a quick access to it.
Once the files are placed where they should go, load Max/MSP and select the ToolBox item in the
Extas menu. You should see a small window appear. To start the Max ToolBox, click the "Load"
button. As long as this checkbox is checked, the ToolBox will start with Max. To unload the
ToolBox (and prevent automatic startup), uncheck the checkbox.
First steps
There are usually two ways to access the functions of this ToolBox, either by pressing a key on the
keyboard or by typing the name of the function in a dialog window. From now on, let's refer to
this dialog window as the “shell”.
The shell is the most powerful way to interact with the ToolBox and it is important to understand it
well.
Note that you can also send separated messages the same way as in a message box using a
comma. You could therefore select several number boxes and send them the following messages
without the quotes : “min 40, max 50”. This would set all the selected number boxes to a minimum
of 40 and a maximum of 50. You can also send simple messages such as “bang” or set values of
common GUI objects.
To invoke the function that connects an outlet to the inlets of a row of objects you would first select
the objects, hit shift-r, type “@sm” and finally hit enter. The connection functions can also accept
arguments to choose which inlet and outlet to connect. To connect outlet 3 of the top object to
inlet 2 of the objects below, you would enter this in the shell instead : “@sm o 3 i 2”.
Notes : The distribution functions will work best with objects of the same size. Diagonal distribution
(by pressing and holding both shortcut keys) works best if the objects are already grossly aligned
in a diagonal manner.
There are 2 ways of choosing inlets and outlets when connecting objects. If you are using the
keyboard shortcut to execute the function, you can type a sequence of keystrokes to choose which
inlet and/or outlet to connect.
Let’s say you want to connect outlet 2 to inlet 3, you would type the following sequentially :
“shift-o 2 shift-i 3” and then the keyboard shortcut of the connection you want to make. You
could also type only “shift-o 2” before connecting if the first inlet is the destination (the default is
always 1).
Note that this works almost the same as when using arguments, the order of the arguments
provided to the shell is not important, you can type something like this : “@sm o 2 i 3” or “@sm i 3
o 2” which would give the same result. You can also type only what is needed, if you want to
connect outlet 2 to inlet 1, you can simply type “@sm o 2”.
For the connect cascade (shift-c) function, you can specify a number of connections to make by
pressing shift-n with a number.
Reference
Connect cascade
Shortcut key shift-c
Shell command @cc
Arguments o n i n (where n is the inlet or outlet number to connect, optional)
Description
This will connect a column of objects in cascade. You can choose which outlet or inlets to
connect by typing a key sequence before hitting C (see explanation at the end of this
document).