Hi PaQ, something else that might help more for your original case would be a modifier key that caused the mouse to only target faces rather than curves or edges.

It would then be pretty difficult to click on an unselected thing because only the topmost face in the zorder is shown, unlike curves where if you have hidden-lines displayed the hidden curves are still faintly visible and selectable.

Normally curves have priority over faces, which is necessary because since they are thin objects and if they didn't have a kind of priority gravity around them they would be really hard to select. But that also causes them to get in the way more often, that problem of unselected curves being in your way seems to be what is mostly causing the original problem that you put the screenshots up for.

- Michael

Yeah the locking of selections via the spacebar in 3ds max is a simple toggle. As someone who must constantly jump between Max & Maya, it's one the first key assignments I end up changing, lol.

But yeah PaQ, when running a transform command your selection is locked. I think you'll find it's a superior workflow once you adjust to it.