My earliest experience with ZBrush custom layouts was way back in Pre-ZBrush2 days when the demo program displayed titlebar buttons for several different layouts for your Zbuttons and Palettes. This included a simplified “beginners” layout that let you learn the basic functionality of model building, texture and material usage, scene assembly and rendering using only the essential tools. Soon after ZBrush2 came out ZBCentral featured a thread discussing the potential for users to customize their interface to accomodate the way they worked.
Many ZBrushers have already adapted their default working interface by dragging/dropping control buttons from different palettes onto various interface shelves. These personalized layouts accomodate and enhance their way of working. Left and right side panels may contain permanent palette-menus which will remain in the panels even when temporarily closed. Once an interface is laid out the user saves it as their default “UICustom” interface by simultaneously pressing Ctrl+Shift+I keys. Each time they restart ZBrush2 the saved layout is loaded from the UICustom.cfg file in the ZBrush2 subdirectory.
NOW COMES ALTVIEW:
ALTVIEW is a plugin that presents a new development towards more sophisticated ZB interface customization. This simple but powerful tool could revolutionize how you work within ZBrush by using multiple interface layouts. For instance, you might already have different specialized layouts: one for creating ZSphere models, another for composing complex scenes and still another for 2D painting (using the recently posted ZketchPad2 interface designed by Aurick and Glen Southern). Each and every custom interface could previously be saved and loaded manually within the Preferences:Config subpalette menu. ALTVIEW organizes the interface swapping process and enables it through a single hotkey. My hope is that ALTVIEW might encourage users to design custom layout solutions and share those multipage layout setups with the rest of us.
ALTVIEW HAS TWO MODES:
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A List-Making Mode that lets you add the names of your layouts (.cfg files) to the “view list”. You populate the view list by opening the Preferences:Config subpalette and pressing the EditView button. In the Note Window that pops up, you enter the names of up to five different layouts stored in the ZBrush2 subdirectory. To add a name, simply click one of an unassigned slot (displayed as a row of dashes). In the directory dialog find your way to the ZBrush2 subdirectory and select a .cfg file and press enter. The name of the layout view you choose will be added to the chosen slot in the list. When you’re finished adding names, press the Done button.
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The always-active BackSlash-Hotkey mode. From this point on when you use ZBrush you can cycle through the listed views simply by pressing the Backslash hotkey. Note that the canvas, active models, layers etc. will remain active in each new interface view. However, if there was a ZScript active in a layout it will no longer be present when you cycle round and reload that view again.
TO INSTALL:
Unzip ALTVIEW.ZIP in the Startup/ZPlugs directory. When you next use ZBrush, you will find the EDITVIEW Button in the Preferences:Config subpalette. I’ve included the .txt version of the script for anyone who might be interested in how it works or in customizing ALTVIEW for their own purposes. You may safely delete the ALTVIEW.TXT file.
As a quick test of ALTVIEW you might try generating a Zketchpad.cfg file from the Zketchpad interface, then adding that to the view list. Next, you might design some alternate layouts and save each as a .cfg file to the ZBrush directory, adding those to the view list as well.
WARNING:
ALTVIEW assumes the presence of a UICustom.cfg file. Anyone using plugins will certainly have already stored some plugin buttons to their custom layout and saved that layout to the UICustom.cfg file. Just to be safe, save a backup of the UICustom.cfg file before you begin experimenting with new interfaces. And remember, each custom layout must be saved in the Preferences:Config:Save Ui palette menu using a unique name with the .cfg extension. Color changes may also be made to your layouts using the Preferences:IColor subpalette. Remember to press the Apply Adjustments button before saving the .cfg file.
Successful use of ALTVIEW depends on YOU to create additional alternate interface layouts. If you discover some new layout designs that you find particularly helpful, please share them in this thread (by uploading your .cfg files, screenshots and explanations).
Please also post any questions, suggestions or problems. 
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:
Many thanks go to Marcus_Civis for his helpful tips and code samples during ALTVIEW development and testing. Particularly: enabling UI colors, “taming the wild backslash” hotkey and hiding the backslash hotkey button.
[Edit: ATTENTION MAC USERS:
Please download the MacVersion_AltView.zip file for the corrected version! (Thanks Dogbone) ]
