One major thing you can do ANYTIME ANY version of MAX starts crashing on a scene is:
open a fresh copy of MAX, and MERGE youe entire scene, this RE-ORDERS all the internal elements in an logical manner (your scene is created piece by piece asyou make edits, over time it is loosely analogous to a hard drive being fragmented, your scene is "all over the place" on the inside because of the order you (everyone,...) does things, when you remerge, MAX automatically gets all "these" things first and puts them tofetger, then get "that hierarchy" and pulls it in in one spots 'in' the MAX file... It's hard to explain why it works but it generallt does. I have had EVERY SINGLE LARGE MAX scene for 12 years eventually get to the point of crashing. NOT ONCE has re-merging my scene in NOT solved the problem. It has worked every time,.. My feeling is it "RE-ORDERS" the elements in the MAX file that are linked or connected (or a models modiriers etc) and puts everything where/how MAX likes it best for accesing and displaying etc,... GOOD LUCK!!
