You are probably just too far away from 0,0,0

Select everything, hit "z". If that doesn't work, select everythign, group it, then move it to 0,0,0.

pretty much same advice as above:

the 3d furniture you imported is probably way way way off in space somewhere. select just those layers and move them to 0,0,0

also, the "z" trick is really helpful for reorienting your view. couldn't live without it anymore.

How do I move them to 0,0,0 if I can't see them? (the 3d furniture files aren't even on this computer, yet, I didn't copy them with the main file, so they're "missing" now)

Everything from the 3D autocad model (that I can see) is at where the main black horizontal and vertical lines meet...from what I can tell everything is centered at 0,0,0 already...

The "z" trick is helpful, after anytime I try to pan and it zooms way in. But I still can't pan when I'm zoomed out.

What happens is that when I pan when I can see my entire drawing, it zooms in for me. Then I have to guess which direction my model is in...then pan, pan, pan, pan, pan, pan, pan, pan, oh there it is. Then I can pan around all I want, lol.

yeah, sounds like you have scattered garbage all over the scene, some things are probably miles away from other things. you need to either click "h" and select one object at a time to see if you really need and and then delete it or move it close to the the rest of the model. Or go layer by layer to see where things are and delete what you don't need or move stuff closer to the rest of the model. This is the problem I get most often when I do freelance work and have to clean up intern's max files, very time consuming indeed...

For AutoCAD, I suggest you save as 2004 version and try to import into max 2009.

And finally the scroll wheel gadget thing is the most annoying thing autodesk ever created, I close it every time I open max, it is totally uneccessary especially when you have all the navigation selections on the bottom right corner.

Oh man, I totally forgot those controls were there, they work so much better, thanks zen! I was about to punch my monitor dealing with that steering wheel.

Upgrade to Max2010. The learning curve is not as steep as 'learning a new program' and they have made some serious advancements that will make your life easier.

milwaukee...i don't know if you already know this but you can hold down the 'alt" key and the middle mouse button at the same time to orbit just the same as the bottom right controls, which is a much quicker and more precise method in my opinion.

Also, you can turn off viewport clipping, turn off backface cull and make sure your normals are oriented consistently.

Thanks for the help folks, I appreciate it.

Also, I'm self taught on this kinda stuff, when I took my schools Computers in Architecture class way back when they were using Accurender, so I've never heard of viewport clipping, backface cull, and normals.

The sum total of my Max experience relates to: importing and file linking of AutoCad models, creating (still trying to figure that one out properly lol) and assigning materials, lights, cameras, zoom, pan, move, scale, rotate...

don't worry, most of us were self-thought because 3ds max education in arch-schools is very lacking, especially when professors are 60 years old.

Actually, my professor for the AutoCAD class missed the first two weeks of our class (in the summer). He forgot he had our class when he agreed to teach a class in Madison or something. We showed up for the first day of class and had to go up and have the main office call him to find out why he didn't show up. The funny thing was that somehow he earned a PhD.