It seems the temp files was at least partially to blame, deleting them sped up the scene maneuvering, but the figure manipulation problem remained. I've since rebuilt the scene "brick by brick" and it's a much smoother experience. I'm not sure what I did but that old file was clocking in at 217 megs whereas the rebuilt scene is topping off at 40. Thanks for the suggestions though, I had forgotten about the "remove unused..." commands, I'm sure they'll come in handy when I really start to get complex scenes going.