OK, well, after playing aruond and doing some work on my own since getting the program myself.  I learned why I was not seeing the geometry from vue imported through the extreme plugin: I had my Max display drivers set to Direct 3D.  They needed to be OpenGL for the objects (terrain, plants, etc) to sho in the max viewport.  I will let every one know who well the Gnomon training is once I get to it.