I am not exactly sure where you are having problems but when you set up your camera only use one 45: 45x 0y 0z.
the other 45 is just a rotate (around your scene) you can just rotate your models once they are complete.

I had no problem modeling in the camera mode tho it was real small so mainly I just used the other VP's

I have no idea what a view cube is. want to post a screenshot of that?

if you are going for a BG scene you do not want a perspective view.

what I do quite often is at the very start of a new scene I select the perspective VP and hit the 'U' on the keyboard (switches it to orthographic/isometric which is fairly close to the bg camera setup.

Well, I checked it more carefully since you wrote that it's possible to model in camera view, and it's so indeed, thanks for the hint!
Still it's not perfect but much better than was before when I tried to manually align orthographic view's PoV with BG area picture:
Orthographic: Camera:

However, there's that old tutorial at SHS which states that using camera view for modelling could lead to some problems. Is this info outdated?

That thing in an upper-right corner of my first screen, as I understand it was only introduced in 3dmax 2009 version. It's used to quickly rotate model by dragging it's corners or sides.



My first screenshot was done in ortographic default setup, and I don't think it's being close enough to BG camera setup actually. Your screenshot had models much better aligned with BG background, did you adjusted VP's point of view manually or it's your default orthographic angle? This camera thing is all nice and good but I'd really prefer to work with orthographic VP if only it's possible to align it exactly like camera with 45x. Is such thing ever doable?

the default orthographic view is not available in max 7

I can't tell the difference between the 2 images except one is zoomed in a bit more.
probably has to do more with your render size, safe frame, and zoom than anything else.

you could always create a bg camera setup with a good render size and save that as your first thing you open when making a new scene. then you can concentrate on more important things like good modeling habits.

The difference is that in first pic it's impossible to align all 4 sides of a model parallel with lines in screenshot at the same time, which means that aspect angle of the model differs from that of a screen which in turn means I couldn't rely on screen to make sure my model is as close to original as possible. It's illustrated by 2nd pic by the way - see that altar legs turned out to be actually shorter than it should, while they looked pretty ok before I checked correct (45x camera) point of view.

Perhaps it's worth a shot indeed to make BG camera, save it and start modelling with it, at least I'll give it a try, thanks!

Ah, I see it now.
you can set the camera to 45, hit U on keyboard (for user) then change it to orthographic but that seems like a lot of unneeded work.

Btw, there´s also a tutorial about setting up the camera in 3ds Max to BG-angle-of-view, step by step, made by me somewhere here. Just try to search it, perhaps in Tutorial section. It´s downloadable PDF file with plenty of pictures... Check it out.