Quote:



Noted and downloaded....  Thanks

Glad I could help you hey.. do you think my english is good enough to release some general tutorials
on simviation ?

I´m currently planning some general tutorials for:
"Poly Modeling", "Patch Modeling", "Smoothing and Normals" (when i find some time)

Actually I´m not shure wich 3 buttons you mean. You
have 3 buttons horizontal in a row.
3d snap/angle snap/percent snap
and there is a forth in the row "spinner snap toggle" wich is a bit special.
when you push the 3d snap button for a second, another
3 buttons will apear vertical that give you the option
to switch between 2d 2,5d and 3d snap.

the most important snap function is 3d snap. Right click on that button opens the snap settings dialog. I suggest you just take a dummy scene and make yourself familiar with
the 12 different snap options. Especially"edge" is a very important mode.
But be warned. max sometimes snaps
quite weird. So always check your model carefully after
each edit. Especialy if you use the "cut" function with snap turned on (cut can be found in the editable poly/subobj. level face. You can use it to divide faces).
Another very important feature you can find in the "grid and snap settings" dialog when you select "option"
(snaps - option - homegrid....). The checkpox "use axis constraints" gives you the option to snap only to a selected axis. You can select an axis from the main toolbar
(x,y,z,xy).

The options 2d and 2,5d snap are not that important (for me) You can use both to snap to grid points either on your default viewport grid or on a grid helper object you can create from the "create/helpers menue. Somehow it looks like these functions don´t work in my gmax installation.
They work as expected in my 3dsmax installation. Don´t know maybe I overlooked some option in gmax.
However..

The remaining horizontal buttons:
Angle Snap Toggle: Applies to rotations only. When active
the rotation is constrained to a selected angle. You can
change the angle (default is 5°) by right clicking on that button.

Percent Snap: The same like Angle Snap just applies to
scale transformations. Instead of angle you select %
by right clicking on that button.

For easy viewport navigation use your middle mouse button to pan. Alt+Middle Mouse to rotate. Strg+Alt+Middle Mouse to zoom. And you can also use
your mouse wheel for zooming. This works for perspective
view, all isometric views (user, top, front...) but not
for camera views.

cheers

My advice would be to customize the beast : I work with a tablet and I've put most of the functions and tools from the menu bar to shortcuts that can be readily accesible with my left hand.
The workflow is greatly helped.