I have an issue with the "point at" in Poser. If you have two objects placed on the same Y plane as each other and point the first object  (lets say a cube) at the second object (a sphere) then move the sphere away from the cube along the Z axis, then move the sphere in both directions along the X axis you may notice that the cube rotates and not pans to follow the sphere, HOW do you stop this rotation????
i have tried removing all the objects rotations from its pp2 file but this does nothing where point at is concerned....lol

Not sure about rotate vs pan, but one common "gotcha" with point-at is the
real direction of pointing.   The ball's EndPoint is what does the pointing.
And the default ball has its EndPoint on top.  Thus, when you first set it
to point at another prop, the ball will try to flop over (rotate on X or Z) instead
of rotating around Y as you might expect.  

This "gotcha" comes up most often with a figure's head ...  the default
EndPoint of most heads is on top, not in front where where the eyes are. 

You can always move the EndPoint (red cross-hairs) with the Joint Editor.

i shall give this a try, the easiest way to explain is point the eyes at the camera and move left and right, if you have a texture map other than an eye texture you will notice the eyes rotate when they follow the camera left and right..... or so this seams with a sphere rotated to the camera...

I think a picture is needed.

Do you mean the eyes rotate partly on Z instead of strictly on Y?

Point-at is strictly a rotation. It never pans.

It sounds like you're expecting the the cube to pan along with the sphere, as if it was parented. Point at doesn't work that way. It never moves an object. It only rotates it so that it always points at whatever you said it should point at.

For example, if you have a spotlight shining on a sphere, and you move the sphere, the spotlight will continue to point at the sphere by rotating in place, without moving from its current position. That's all that point at does.

If you want an object to move with another object you parent it.

However, it may be you intend to rotate the target object and your desire is that the cube does not orbit when the target rotates. If you parent the cube to the sphere, and pan the sphere, the cube will pan. If you rotate the sphere, the cube will orbit. I'm not aware of any way to change that.

However, with Poser 8's dependent parameters, you could slave the position of the cube to the position of the sphere, so that panning the sphere pans the cube too, in the same way that parenting does. In that situation, the cube would never rotate or orbit except because you told it to explicitly, or if you also had it point at something.

You probably mean that the constrained object rotates about the point-at axis when you move the target. This is some sort of gimbal lock problem. To fix it you can usually do the following:

1. Point the constrained object (your cube) at the target (your sphere).

1. Move each rotate dial of the constrained object. One of the rotate dials won't work, i.e. it doesn't rotate the constrained object.

1. Set the nonworking rotate dial to -90 or 90. This has no visible effect on the orientation of the constrained object (see step 2).

1. Move the target. The constrained object should now follow without rotating about the point-at axis. If the -90 degrees setting doesn't work, try the 90 degrees setting.
    

What they said :) 

If you open the joint editor for a simple prop the green and red crosshairs will show how point-at will work. These centers align to the poitr at target with the prop rotationg about the grren center until the red center is in alignment.