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Page 1.

E-mail Billy.

You can also access the help menu by clicking on the Help Mode icon which is situated on the tool bar, and then clicking on the object you wish to know about.

If you hold the cursor over any button for a couple of seconds, a prompt will appear telling you what that button is:

Open 3D Studio Max by double clicking the Max icon or going:

 Start Menu>Programs>Kinetix>3D Studio Max R3. 

At the top of the screen is the Menu Bar:

This works the same as other Windows based applications. Each menu on the menu bar is accessed as a pulldown.

We will learn more about the various menus as we come to use them.

One menu that is worth mentioning now is the Help menu. If you choose:

Help>Online Reference

it will bring up the Help window. You can use this to search for help on a topic. The Help in Max is very extensive and well worth using.

The Toolbar is situated directly below the Menu Bar:

The Toolbar does not all fit on the screen. In order to see all of the buttons and drop-downs on the Toolbar, you need to scroll it from left to right. You do this by placing the cursor over the Toolbar in between two buttons. The cursor will turn into a hand:

While the cursor is in this state, click and drag the Toolbar left and right to access the other buttons.

The Toolbar is used for mainly for transforming/manipulating objects. We will cover these functions in a later lecture, so I wont bother confusing you by trying to explain what all the buttons do. All you need to remember is that the "Toolbar" is the "Toolbar", so when I refer to it later, you know where to look.

One set of buttons that I will mention now is the Undo buttons:

These are used to undo and redo actions you have performed and are extremely useful. The left button undoes an action, the right button redoes it. 

Some of the buttons in the interface contain a choice of buttons within them. This is indicated by a small arrow/triangle in the bottom right hand corner of the button. This following button, for example, determines the shape of the selection marquee: 

By default, it is set to "Rectangular Selection Region", but if you click and hold on the small arrow in the corner, the button will expand:

 You can now choose from:

Rectangular Selection Region:
Circular Selection Region:
Fence Selection Region:

Don't worry for the moment what these buttons do. You just need to be aware that some buttons contain more than one option.

You can recognise a drop-down menu by the black arrow button to its right. For example, the co-ordinate system drop-down, situated in the Toolbar:

If you click on any part of this menu, it will open a drop-down list from which you can select an option:

When you finish playing around with the interface, to set everything back to its default settings, click on the File Pull-Down Menu in the Menu Bar and choose Reset. Then say Yes when asked if you really want to reset. 

Resetting is very useful if you get confused or lost in the interface. But be aware that it will erase any unsaved information!