Is there any setting that can be changed within maya so that imported objects either through the copy/paste or import dialog are brought in without automatically being put in a group and having the "pasted" prefix added on?

it's not a major inconvenience but it's rather annoying to have things nicely named and cleanly set up in one scene, bring it over to another and have to re-name and un group

Maya does it as a protection to not copy over files on the existing file you are pasting. But yeah, why the groups? I don't know... hard to say. It's just like as "separate", creates groups, plus nodes everywhere. I rather using "detach" from CreativeCrash.

After import, select the groups and go to Modify > Search and Replace Names. If you have pasted__ as prefix do:

Search for: pasted__
Replace with: (add a space)

Replace hierarchy. If you did correctly Maya will whine in the log editor but will successfully remove all the prefixes.

you can modify the existing copy/paste script from maya.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/132816/cutCopyPaste.mel
i added a comment in the script so you can see what i did change. copy it in the maya script folder, restart maya and no more groups and _pasted prefix. if you don't like it, just delete the script from the folder and you're back to maya default...

thanks for the info guys much appreciated.

fade1: thanks a lot man, above and beyond!

hey, thats awesome, thanks fade1

You could also use duplicate rather than copy/paste (ctrl+d).

Doesn't work between scenes. ;)

Ah yes.. this is why I should read the post properly

I made myself a button that exports selection to c:temp as temp.mb, I then have another button which imports c:temp/temp.mb

No groups, works between scene or with multiple copies of Maya open. You could make this a single button in Maya 2011 or later by giving it double click properties to import and single click to export.