If you look at Eddie Perlberg´s Autodesk University video, you can see, that Eddie had the same problem in his show…

QuadCore2 Extreme Q6850 @ 3.0 GHz, 8 GByte RAM, 2 x Nvidia GTX 580, Win7 64Bit
- Never underestimate the power of a dark clown -

I am also having this problem.  I’m running max on a dell laptop with its own display as Primary (can’t be changed for some reason), and a LaCie as the secondary. 

The problem seems to be the LaCie sits on the left (and is monitor #2 in Display Preferences), and the Laptop on the right.  So Display Prefs shows it as 2 | 1

Panning / zooming in this configuration causes the mouse cursor to jump to the Primary and odd behavior in the viewport.

A workaround seems to be putting the LaCie on the right side of the laptop and reconfiguring the Display Prefs so it looks like 1 | 2 - you can put Max on either monitor and Pan/Zoom fine.

Unfortunately my physical desk layout doesn’t lend itself to swapping the hardware around.

Anyone know if/when a fix will become available?

Thanks for this thread!
I had the same issue when trying to pan either by using middle mouse click or clicking the pan tool. I read the thread and changed my primary monitor. The problem for me seemed to be that the primary monitor was on the right hand side.
I am running Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit, Max Design 2010 64bit and I have a wacom 21 ux and a samsung sync master2343. I keep the wacom to left because I am left handed. The samsung is monitor one, the wacom is monitor two - in windows 7 you can swap which side they are on with out swapping cables - 1 can be on the left or right. When the samsung was set as the primary display the problem seemed to be that max has a problem with the primary display being on the right. Once I changed the wacom to the primary (even though its monitor 2, its on the left- see the attachment) the problem was resolved.

Paul_IRET 08 September 2009 12:25 PM

Was anyone able to try this and see if they had the same issue?

Thanks,
Paul

I’ve tried to use dual monitor before, but I used a desktop. I tried from what he’s trying to do, but I don’t see the problem. It shouldn’t affect much to a laptop.

Unless the laptop’s graphic card could not support 3d interface for extended monitors.
Are you sure that your mouse isn’t on an abnormal surface when you try to pan in 3D max?

Issue still exists in 2012.  Using max on the first monitor fixes the issue.

mrapelje 20 March 2012 02:09 PM

Issue still exists in 2012.  Using max on the first monitor fixes the issue.

Confirmed! I also use max 2012. I just discovered this today after setting up my 2 monitor workspace. Having max on the second monitor is trouble. Having it on the first is not a problem.

Anyway happy to see that people have found a workaround at least, but since it is reproducable it should not be that hard to fix. Has anyone tried it in 2013.

http://3dsmaxfeedback.autodesk.com/forums/76763-publicsmallannoyingthings

--
Markus Schille
Visual Artist at Aker Solutions

Current System:
3dsMax 2012 - Servicepack 2 - Win 7 Enterprise 64 bit
HP Z800 - 64 GB Memory - Quadro 4000 (2 gb) - Intel Xeon X5675 @ 3.06 GHz (2 processor. In total 12 cores)

This is still a problem with 2012. Is 2013 better ?

http://3dsmaxfeedback.autodesk.c...is-in-a-secondary-monitor

Another lefty here! (left hand set up)

I had my husband help me figure out what was going on and he found this thread for me. Like the person above, I went from a nice black hair to grey hair trying to figure out what was going on. Including checking for what was updated recently to uninstalling and reinstalling all my drivers. This thread saved me from doing something drastic! 

I did register and vote as well.  I already have an Autodesk account, so I had to create one just for this. It was well worth it!

Thank you so much for the answers and the temp fix. I cast my vote of three points!!

Hello,
I can confirm that the issue is very old. First time I saw this problem was with 3Dmax 8, then 9, 2010, 2012. I am using 3D max on various desktop computers, with ordinary ATI/AMD cards connected to various monitors (two, three or four) with identical or different resolution, with Hydravision or without. I tested even various mouses :). It bothers me on windows XP and 7 as well. Still, 3Dmax work good only on primary monitor, but I want use the whole desktop for work.
It’s very strange that no one was able to fix it during so long period.

I tested “top allign” mentioned above by Paul_IRET, but without good result. I have two HD monitors with same resolution, actually.

Jean cz