What do you mean by zooming, but not the whole scene? And programatically or with native interface? I guess you know Shift+LMB+drag and Ctrl+LMB+drag combos...
Setup Camera method of 3D Picture control. You might also like to play with Modelview Matrix (property of 3D Picture). Refer to uncle G. and this forum. Keywords: modelview, OpenGL
Probably you have "Auto Redraw" checked. Control is updated periodically and it may happen that it is being refreshed in the middle of some transformation. Particularly if you do transformation each iteration.
Yes, but rotation always is first. So you have to sum rotated translations.
Internally transformations are stored as 4x4 Transformation Matrix (it is a property of SceneObject). Total object transformation (rotation, translation and scale) in relation to parent is coded inside it. There are many good articles about it. Understanding it helps a lot. Similar issues where already mentioned on this forum as well.
As for the file attached - again - 2009 please
And please clearly mark if you do cross-posting (indicating links at both places)