Thanks Mark, for the additional info. Last night was spent cutting the final ties to Carrara 2.0 [wherein particles wouldn't work worth a damn] and opening Carrara 4.3, where they did...but oddly. I can see that I have A LOT of work ahead of me. And another long night tonight trying to apply what you posted today. The most frustrating part of last night was, if you start to make a small 'boom' and increase the particle generator size during the explosion [on the timeline] the particles look like they've morphed into ping-pong balls. How to get around that?

Also, the hot point does not want to stay at the center of the generator, and the generator jumps around, frequently out of the camera view. I often had to install a keyframe at every frame on the timeline to keep it in place. Is this normal?

Would I be right in supposing that a good satisfying explosion could be set up in one document, dragged to the browser and installed 'X' number of times in another scene?