OK upon furthur investigation this seems to hinge upon the "system scale" i use in max...which in my case is left at the defualt of 1 unit = 1 meter, if i mess with that i can fudge the results in various ways since max has various ways to set the scale globally and locally,so possibly my version only apply's to my setting which is as i stated 1 unit = 1 meter with the "auto unit conversion" checked as far as i know these are the defualt settings within 3dsmax but may not acuurately reflect "reality" whatever the heck that really is! it works for me at any rate!