2 things that have almost bugged me about Max

[tricky]

Recently started doing more modelling in Max. Now that we are running 2012 (after coming from 2009 to 2013, realising 2013 was a piece of crap, and moving back to 2012), I STILL have the same 2 issues with Max:-

1) Snaps - they are temepramental at best, and you often need to pan around or zoom out to kick it into snapping. On closer inspection, the accuracy of the snap is poor.

2) Object selection is erratic at best - quite often I can be working with a model and click to select an object, only to find that Max selects something that isn't below the mouse pointer. It seems to have the same edge detection ability of Manic Minor!

Anyone share this? Its been going on since 3dsmax version 1 I think!!!!

[bardo]

They are features not bug... or if you prefer... "It's magic!"

[Morne]

I think max 9 was the last version that kinda worked nicely when selecting stuff, with newer versions half the time its easier to select with "h" from the list than it is to click on things.
Although the selecting is better if you switch to OpenGL it seems. Even now with max 2012 and 2013 I switch to OpenGL for heavy scenes. Nitrous and DIrectx just dies if I have a heavy scene, although it has other nice things on smaller scenes that you struggle with in OpenGL

[trixian]

I don't like OpenGL as my vertices shrink to invisible all the time. Happens in DX too. I have had issues with shaded face selections too. Nitrous is the only one that seems reasonable these days.
As for the selection stuff you guys mentioned, I think it is because of the way max handles navigation and scene sizes. For me it seems a zoom extents selected or all fixes this some times after having manually navigated and zoomed around for a while. Object transforms can really screw this up too, if something is scaled a lot.

[tammo]

For selecting objects i alternate between wired and shaded mode on nitrous.
In shaded mode it selects the surface that is close to you.
If that surface is already selected, it selects the surface below that, and so on.
If i doesnt work, check the viewport clipping.
Maybe the view is inside an object, or so close to an object that its clipped, but thats still used for the selection order.
In wire mode you can pretty reliably click directly on the edges instead.
So you can even select objects that are behind another in one click.

[Bruce Hart]

Hi Tricky - I hear you, those things are annoying As for the snapping (you probably know this already) I find in some cases the snap works much better when the selection is locked first (space bar toggle), and there is only one snap type operational. If you have vertex and a few others active at the same time MAX gets confused.

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

If max selection annoys you than I dont even want to think what u would say about maya selections. Maya cant select at all. Its like winning a lottery to get something selected that you want in 1 click...

[tricky]

If max selection annoys you than I dont even want to think what u would say about maya selections. Maya cant select at all. Its like winning a lottery to get something selected that you want in 1 click...

Haha. Great analogy.

If Autodesk focussed on these sorts of issues, I think we would all be much happier.

[Neilg]

It takes a while, but i've got so used to moving into new positions & locking/using one snap type that I totally forgot this was even an issue. You work around it to the point where it will disappear from your workflow.