If you turn off a layer then at present there is no warning that this operation is invalid - you just don't see anything until you unhide the layer. 3ds max needs to trap this error and throw up a dialog warning you that the layer is hidden.

since Slate introduction, material preview is much slower, needs to be the same as it was with the old mat editor

The ability to copy and paste objects between instances of 3ds max would greatly improve workflow. I already have a scripted solution but I rely on it so heavily I feel it should ship with Max.

When mirroring an object or elements of it, max flips the faces / normals.
To reset the matrix you have to apply a Reset xform and flip the normals. This should happen automaticaly without having to collaps the whole stack of the object

A Pause button for mentalray would be really, really useful. The renderer is so good at using all the cores on my machine that I am unable to multitask, I can't quickly switch to another program while it's rendering, I have to cancel, or wait for the render to finish. A Pause button would let me quickly switch to say my email, or Notepad to write something down quickly, or ACDSee to quickly check out an image before resuming the render.

3dsmax picking (selecting) has always been something autodesk should be ashamed of.
Please correct this, and allow for a real select and pick tool, like all other package, which will select the very first object under the cursor.

It's great that we can use one material to override the entire scene. But we need the ability to keep certain materials from being over-ridden.

When you open a scene with a whole lot of maps missing, would Like a option to just REMOVE/DELETE that map from the scene.

or even in the Asset tracking, just a option to delete the map or file from the scene

In a huge scene after a certain point when you zoom in (in perspecive view.) you cant pan the camera or zoom more in it gets very slow unless you zoom out again. To work around this i have to select something small and close zoom into that object and then pan over to what i really want to edit.

IMHO it would be good if we can insert values with "," or with "." as decimal separator.

Selection inside the UVW window is horrid. it needs stuff that's already in max, such as shift clicking edges to select the loop/row

Double clicking to select the whole island.

FFDs inside the uvw window

and changing the move/rotate/scale gizmo's to the same as the ones in the 3d view.

what I'm saying is make the uvw window feel like its max and not like you have to learn new buttons

If you set up your mental ray settings and then switch to quicksilver. When you go back to mental ray, all of your settings are reset.

When I open a maxfile, max should ask me if it should automatically point to the project folder from the file I opened

Need a sphere (and ellipsoid) where the topology is in quads, avoiding the singularity at the poles.

The scale of the 2D representation of procedural maps can only be changed for the previews in the material editor, while the maps used in the viewport have a fixed scale, which is far off the actual size in the rendering most of the time. It would be nice to have a better viewport preview of the actual scale of the map on the model.

It happens every once in a while... a window, like the material editor or the environment panel, for instance, won't show up when opened, they're somewhere outside the monitor's resolution. As opposed to manually look for those windows positions on ini files or sometimes reconfiguring dual monitors layout, it would be good to have a "reset all windows positions" and move all windows back to the center of the main 3dsmax window.

This is an option that was available in older version of Max where you could keep the last rendered frame visible, while the new one is being rendered on top of it.

There should be an option in the rendering window to turn off Missing UV and bitmaps Nag so a render can continue on regardless. Specially for network rendering. Most of the time if I cannot see them missing during my test renders I do not need them.
For geometry with missing UV's an option to assign a UV box map automatically to missing UV's would be handy.