I am working through the Apache tut and keep running into the same problem -- the proxy mesh objects appear to be disconnecting from the smooth mesh objects "randomly".

At the object level, scaling and translation of the proxy mesh does affect the smooth mesh but when I switch to verts or edges, there is no effect on the smooth mesh. The only fix I've been able to find is to delete the smooth mesh and recreate it.

I am fairly certain it's a setting issue in the Proxy creation since I'm running Maya 2008 and the tut was for version 5. The whole proxy creation process seems to have evolved a bit...