In using materials, while you are able to pan in close to the cube my view seems to disappear when closing in on the cube. I have moved the main camera away but still disappears. What settings should I use?
Sometimes that happens. I believe the cube I was using is increased in size. If you zoom in really close on small objects they tend to disappear. It's an issue with Unity, and unfortunately has been around for a while. The few things you can do include increasing the size of the object and/or resetting the layout to the factory settings. It's annoying but you can't adjust the editor camera settings yet. If it's an actual camera in your scene then you can adjust the near and far clipping settings on it.
