I realise that in the past .... version max8.0 at least

1 select some objects
2 spacebar to lock selected object
3 turn on snap and choose a point in space as reference.
(snap along active axis turned on)
4 hold shift move along a desired axis
5 rolling the mouse wheel without releasing the left mouse button does a
zoom operation in the current viewport.

but now ...
5 rolling the mouse wheel scroll the command panel. ( where usually there
is no need for scrolling of the command panel while you are doing clone | move
operations.

why is that ... any solution or is it a new way of doing the zoom while holding the
first mouse button in a clone operation

Best regards,

Studio Max 2009 x64
X5000 Chipset | Dual Core Intel 5140 | 4G RAM | Nvidia FX3450 | WindowsXP 64

Same resutl here.  I guess I usually scroll the wheel with the same finger as I left click with, so I’ve never run into this before.  Either stretch your command panel out so there is nothing to scroll, or don’t have the modify tab active when you want to scroll.

You can also use the [ and ] keys to zoom in and out, and the i key to center viewport on selected.

3DS Max Design 2011 64-bit - Advantage Pack
Dell Precision T5500, Dual Six Core Xeon X5650 @ 2.67GHz, nVidia Quadro 5000, 24 GB RAM, Win 7 Enterprise 64-bit
Minneapolis, MN, USA

It used to work ... just interested to know if there were issue with how it didn’t perform
and was removed.

Studio Max 2009 x64
X5000 Chipset | Dual Core Intel 5140 | 4G RAM | Nvidia FX3450 | WindowsXP 64

This appears to have been an “issue” since at least Max 7, so it’s nothing new in 2009.

If the object is a primitive then shift+move+scroll works (in all the versions i tested).
If the object has modifiers then it may work (eg a Bend).
If the object has an Edit (poly/mesh/patch) modifier it fails and scrolls the Modify panel.
If the object has been converted to Editable (poly/mesh/patch) it fails.

Maybe it’s just the way I hold my mouse (MX518), but I find it very awkward to scroll while holding the LMB so it’s not something I’ve ever tried doing (until now).

Max 4.2 through 2013.
XP-64 (SP2)
NVidia 9800GTX-512 (Driver 266.58).
Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz, 8Gb Ram, DX9.0c.

Yup so now it’s my finger’s fault haha… thanks

well, honestly I don’t do that alot it’s just that sometimes you realised in between
those actions you have not zoom out far enough and could done so with a simple
scroll. And all of those actions are screen command and suddenly when you start
scrolling it switch to the command panel on the right ... I did it in MAX 8.0 and no
Max 7.0 it was working for me as well. I used max since MAX 1.2 when kinetix was
the advertised company incharged.

Studio Max 2009 x64
X5000 Chipset | Dual Core Intel 5140 | 4G RAM | Nvidia FX3450 | WindowsXP 64

It seems to both work and fail in Max7 through Max2009 pretty consistently - it’s entirely dependent on the object type as far as I can tell.

Try it on a single object - no need to lock the selection, just use the normal Move gizmo axes for the shift+clone operation.

Max 4.2 through 2013.
XP-64 (SP2)
NVidia 9800GTX-512 (Driver 266.58).
Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz, 8Gb Ram, DX9.0c.