I have a scene file with proxies for low, medium, and high resolution geometry. If I have Maya launched, I can switch a proxy by right clicking a reference in the Reference Editor and going to Proxy -> Reload Proxy As. I can also use the proxySwitch mel command.
Can you switch proxies without even opening Maya? Basically, I want to know if I can hack the .ma file and set the proxies that way. My issue is that the scene file has a lot of objects. If I load in the high resolution proxies (for rendering), the process takes forever and crashes Maya 2016. I have taken a look at the scene file and it is not readily apparent to me how to do this.