See, that is my point really. The fact that you feel Maya is inefficient, as from my point of view the entire interface is more intuative.
It is talked about the Modes, but that isn't true. Unlike Lightwave where you have different programs and you have to wait for different areas to load up or run them all at the same time, swapping mesh between programs. Maya is just really a way of grouping things.
Change to Animation and you get a large number of menu's aimed at Animation tools, Change to Modelling and you get the modelling menu's appear.
You can still access the general stuff you want to use via the Tabbed Menu, so you can Animated, Model, etc.. all at the same time, you just have a cleaner main menu that has specific tools for what your doing at that point in time.
Furthermore you can switch between the menu interfaces with the number keys, which allows for quick switching.
Press Spacebar and Hold it in your viewport, and you have every menu directly available to you right there. Right-Click on a Mesh and you have all of the operations needed for selection there.
Side Panels are expandable for specifying actual values and editing in layers. But generally speaking not needed.
Your Tranformation & Views are on the other side.
Your Animation Keyframe & Maya Editor Language down the bottom.
General features in the tabs above, then above that you get into specifics for the current Interface.
So from my perspective, the UI is far more intuative providing you with everything at basically 1-Click away, and if it isn't.. then you can very very quickly edit things without any hassle to dow what you want via MEL, or even just dragging commands.
You can pull apart the UI including the main menu, and place things where-ever you choose; So if you prefer 3D Max's Layout, it's possible to easily recreate it.
While Maya is obviously not a CAD program like Max, what I do prefer are how the tools work, and the stability of the program.
Maya has never crashed on me, it's cutting tools don't create faces until you export or cut them yourself... if you ever find you have loose Vertices, simply select all of them and press 'Delete' just to get rid of those vertices that are loose.
But this does all come down to preferences. I mean honestly I dislike 3D Studio Max with quite a vengance; but provided you have talent no matter what tools your using you can often produce the same results, might take a bit longer and be frustrating but work-out just fine.
If your happy with something then it's worth what you've paid, if not then you'll feel it was a waste of cash. This goes with anything though really doesn't it?
From my perspective, Max isn't worth it's price tag, but as it is an industry standard... it is an invaluable product to know to provide me with a wider range of skills, allowing me to adapt to other companies pipelines rather than forcing them to either teach me, slow to my pace in that product, or change to another product I do know.
As most hobbiests only have to answer to yourselves, doesn't matter not knowing what you don't find good to use.
Actually right now for modellers it is quite good, because you now have Free versions of products with which to learn on to see what you do and don't like.
When I learnt most of these products a decade ago, you have to purchase the full versions, so it was a gamble spending money on a product you weren't quite sure what it was going to be like.
Maya was the program most people were with when pipelines changed to 3D because really there was no alternative; but when 3D Studio Max r2 was released, it provided a good cheap alternative. Hense why it is currently one of the most used products, cause it was cheap heh.
