topic Re: How to save my "Home Grid" settings? in 3ds Max Forum

How to save my "Home Grid" settings?

Anonymous — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 12:37:07 GMT

Nothing I do seems to save my settings in this dialog. Other settings and preferences are getting saved but not these - is that a bug or are they saved via some other command/option? Any help appreciated, since I hate having to change these settings every time max starts up.

Thanks

Re: How to save my "Home Grid" settings?

kgokhangurbuz — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 13:54:12 GMT

Hi;

Each time 3ds Max starts, these parameters reset by default. And 3ds Max starts with a scene named maxstart.max under your installation folder which is is c:\program files\Autodesk\3dsmaxversion\scenes by default.

Please adjust your Grid and Snap Settings > Home Grid tab parameters and save this file as maxstart.max to the folder path i mentioned above.

Next time you start your 3ds max, your Home grid options will not be changed anymore.

Best regards;

Re: How to save my "Home Grid" settings?

Anonymous — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 14:21:52 GMT

@kgokhangurbuz wrote:
Hi;

Each time 3ds Max starts, these parameters reset by default. And 3ds Max starts with a scene named maxstart.max under your installation folder which is is c:\program files\Autodesk\3dsmaxversion\scenes by default.

Please adjust your Grid and Snap Settings > Home Grid tab parameters and save this file as maxstart.max to the folder path i mentioned above.

Next time you start your 3ds max, your Home grid options will not be changed anymore.

Best regards;

Firstly thank you for the prompt reply. However, this didn't work for me and I think the reason why it didn't work is because I had set my project path to point to a set of project files included with a video tutorial (which suggested I set my project path to the project files to make "following along" easier).

So - I did as you suggested and set my home grid the way I wanted in a new blank document and saved it at the now default project location and upon restarting Max, it did indeed pick up on my changes and loaded the MaxStart.max file I'd saved. So problem (kinda) solved.

My question now is - do I need to keep doing this with every new project I make? ie: Copy this MaxStart.max file to the scenes folder of every new project I make? Is there a way to tell Max to look for this startup file in the same place every time regardless of where I set my project path?

It's not a huge problem, but given that Max manages other preferences on its own, it does not make sense to me that these grid settings need to be reset manually with every project or have a MaxStart file in every project for them to take effect.

Re: How to save my "Home Grid" settings?

kgokhangurbuz — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 14:48:48 GMT

Hi;

No, 3ds Max starts with the file maxstart.max as default and it's not created in the project folder.

The main .exe of the software reads maxstart.max from its installation folder, so your project folders should be fine

Re: How to save my "Home Grid" settings?

Anonymous — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 15:35:14 GMT

I again tried placing the maxstart.max file all over the place in the installation folder and it didn't work for me.

After some googling I found some info on the Autodesk Knowledge Network pages at Autodesk and in short the line of specific interest reads:

"3ds Max looks formaxstart.max in the MaxStart folder specified on the Configure User Paths File I/O panel."

Based on that info, it implies that each new project would need its own maxstart.max file since that MaxStart folder is relative to the root of the project..

Re: How to save my "Home Grid" settings?

kgokhangurbuz — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 16:03:59 GMT

I think there's something strange here, because none of my project folders have a maxstart.max file, and i think this file is not the "root" of the project, else it would just save on this file when you simply do a ctrl+s. I'm pretty sure maxstart.max is being read from the installation directory regardless of how many project folders users have.

Re: How to save my "Home Grid" settings?

Anonymous — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 16:21:10 GMT

As I see it, maxstart.max is just a template that it looks for by default in default locations - if it finds it, it will "create" a new "untitled" scene using it as the template. If it does not find it in the default places, it simply creates a "normal" default startup scene.

I went into the Customize > Configure User Paths ... and changed the path for MaxStart to point to a location of my choice (a permanent location) and Max set that one path to be a non-relative one so it will always look in the same place for maxstart.max regardless of where my project's root folder is. Exactly what I wanted. Now all new projects use this same startup scene as I've configured it. Atm it only saves my home grid settings, but I imagine there might be other settings that don't get saved as preferences, and I'll add those when I come across them.

If you don't use maxstart.max, then I assume you don't need different settings for the home grid or you change them whenever you need too - I wanted to set them once and forget it. I would have preferred them to just be saved like other preferences, but the template idea is not bad either - once you know about it.

Re: How to save my "Home Grid" settings?

kgokhangurbuz — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 16:26:50 GMT

I completely agree and i use custom maxstart.max save too, and what i explained just works fine with me, also just asked a friend about it and he replied the same.

But i still wonder, how do you get maxstart files in your project files since i made a search in my project files and all i found were my projects save files and i simply have two maxstart files in my installation folder (one is backup one is my custom).

Re: How to save my "Home Grid" settings?

Anonymous — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 16:41:54 GMT

I don't get maxstart.max in my project files ... I put it there myself manually to get MAX to see it since the default path where it looks for it is in the .\scenes sub-folder of the project. I configured max to use all relative paths, so it made the search path for maxstart.max relative as well. I modified just that 1 path and made it hard coded to point to my max installation folder - now it always looks there and is the only non-relative path in my project file structure as set up by max.

I've attached the before/after images of how I set the paths. It might help explain what I did.

The 1st image is how Max set itself up on its own. The 2nd image is where I change the path to be a fixed path instead of relative to the project.

Re: How to save my "Home Grid" settings?

kgokhangurbuz — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 16:47:16 GMT

You took me wrong, i was asking, how your project folders read a different maxstart.max (the resetted one) but your answer explains it now.

I still dont know how but i can create any project folder without moving / copying my maxstart.max file.

Anyway, i think we've come to a solution.

Best regards;

Re: How to save my "Home Grid" settings?

Anonymous — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 16:57:35 GMT

Yeah, that is strange - No matter where I put the maxstart file max just didn't see it until i forced it to look at a specific place.

Thanks for you input - I really have no idea what I'm doing in max, it's way way to complex to just pick it up and use, but i know it's worth the effort.

Re: How to save my "Home Grid" settings?

jens.diemer — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 09:04:39 GMT

Sometimes settings will be reset. See also: http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/3ds-max-3ds-max-design-general/3ds-max-reset-itself-all-custom-settings/td-p/5564585

Re: How to save my "Home Grid" settings?

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 09:49:58 GMT

@jens.diemer wrote:
Sometimes settings will be reset. See also: http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/3ds-max-3ds-max-design-general/3ds-max-reset-itself-all-custom-settings/td-p/5564585

That's very much worth knowing about although my issue seems unrelated to the problems described in that thread. For me it is just a basic function of Max, that it does not save certain settings in any of the normal preference saving files. Using the maxstart.max template option does resolve that particular problem for me.

I do find it a little surprising (given how long it's been around) to learn that Max does not support multiple open projects or that having multiple instances open can mess up its own config files.

I'm currently using 2015 SP3 and very new to it so I doubt I'll have that issue any time soon since I'm already struggling with just one instance of the program.

Re: How to save my "Home Grid" settings?

sujonline — Fri, 02 May 2025 15:14:52 GMT

Adjust the grid size as needed, then save the file to C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 20xx\scenes with the name maxstart.max, and close 3ds Max. Reopen 3ds Max, set the default project folder to the Desktop, and save a blank scene there. Close 3ds Max again and delete the new folder created on the Desktop. Now, when you launch 3ds Max, it will automatically load your maxstart.max file.