Before I go into detail about the problem, here’s what I’m on:

Vista 64-bit Ultimate
Q6600 quad
4 GB ram
Radeon 3850 HD
3DS Max 2009 64-bit

Okay, so I was working on a project, saved it, and then went to exit the program. Literally right as I pressed the “X” button, I had a powerfailure. A few seconds later, the power came back on and my computer rebooted. When I tried to run 3DS Max again, I got an error message that the “MaxStarUI.mnu” file was corrupt and Max refused to load. I found the file in my AppData folder and deleted it. Now I could load Max again. Next, I went to load the last file I was working on and Max claimed the file was invalid. I ended up having to retrieve and earlier version of the file in my Autoback folder. Okay, fine and good. Now I discovered a new problem that happens whether I start a completely new project or edit and old one:

Whenever an object is beyond a certain range in the world space, my grid will disappear in the view port for that axis! This problem had never occured before the power failure, so I knew right away this wasn’t right. Actually it took my quite some time to figure out what exactly was causing my grid to drop out on me, and only through experimenting for several hours did I finally pinpoint the object movement range was causing it.

At any rate, I mapped out the range where my grid stay intact, and its X - to + 3000, Y - to + 6000, and Z - to + 3300. If I go even one unit beyond these values for any object in the scene, I lose the grid display for that axis. If I go beyond all 3 values, naturally I lose the grid for all 3 axi. Is there a way to correct this issue, or did the power failure somehow corrupt my installation of Max?

Thanks for any help you might could give on this!

3DS Max 2009 64-bit, Vista 64-bit
Q6600, 8GB ram, Radeon 5770 HD

If one .ini was corrupt then it’s quite possible for others to be so as well. First thing I would try is to rename your 3dsmax.ini (in the directory above where you found MaxstartUI).

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

I just tried that and the problem still happens. I even removed the entire Max folder from the AppData to reset everything and the problem still occurs. I make a box, move it beyond those ranges I listed, and the grid drops out on the display.

Edit: I’ve been messing around with the problem some more and found I can “ancor” the grid by leaving an object within the specified range. I can then make a 2nd object and move beyond the range without the grid dropping. I also noted strange behavior in the relationship to the grid and the two objects, where their distance from eachother also changes the range at which the grid will drop out. This indicates to me some sort of buggy memory behavior within the program. I’m hoping the power failure didn’t screw my ram up, but I’ve run other ram-intensive programs since then and they run fine.

3DS Max 2009 64-bit, Vista 64-bit
Q6600, 8GB ram, Radeon 5770 HD

Grid and Snap Settings > Home Grid (tab) > deselect the 2 checkboxes on that dialog. See if that helps.

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

Those selections don’t actually pertain to the problem. The first one unchecked means I can zoom in and the grid will continue to subdivide. By default I have this one unchecked as I prefer to have a grid when I zoom in. The 2nd box refers to the perspective view of course and has no effect on the other views. Nonetheless, I unchecked it just to make sure and it had no effect as predicted.

At any rate, its very possible this problem is not related to the power failure, even though I did not notice it until afterwords. The project I was working on was the first time I attempted to work on long distance geometry with no objects in the center of the world space. It may be the bug was there in the program the whole time and I revealed it by deleting geometry in the center, causing the grid to drop.

3DS Max 2009 64-bit, Vista 64-bit
Q6600, 8GB ram, Radeon 5770 HD

Quite possible - ISTR that being mentioned here before (though for which version and in which forum I can’t remember). You may want to check your system scale - having things too far from the origin (max units) is not a good idea, generally speaking.

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

Try placing some simple boxes at 0,0 to see if the problem changes any.

Maneswar Cheemalapati [FA]

Did you not read the Edit in my 2nd post?

3DS Max 2009 64-bit, Vista 64-bit
Q6600, 8GB ram, Radeon 5770 HD

Uh, no, I apparently did not.  Sorry, I was rushing through and glanced over the entire topic… I don’t know that there is any other solution at this point but to try to model near the origin.  Or, do as you did and as I suggested.  But that only works up to a point and then you still get errors.  In the future, Max may get more precision because of available memory or 64bit systems, but Max is on a 32bit system and it’s intentionally dumbed down to a lesser bit depth precision, to speed up operation.  So who knows.

Maneswar Cheemalapati [FA]