I've been at it and still not making any headway.  I've gotten all manner of wierd results as shown in the attached images. In 'CR2 fun-01 I've got the mannikan files open to compare with my files.  In my obj file I get two similar groups...or do I?  I've read some stuff on obj file formats but they are all rather vague.  Can I delete one or the other?

In this shot of the group editor one can see the two groups.  Can I assume that this is from the two listing in the obj file?

I tried to use Poser File Editor and got these 'WTF's' .  PFE did nothing but screw up both the obj and CR2 file.  Back to hand editing for me.

...then I somehow got this....

I'm comparing the mannikin cr2 file with my hand edited file for my medieval pear and they appear to be the same but my pear either doesn't show up or shows up incomplete.

It can't be THAT hard can it?  While every tutorial example differs in some details, they all should work since Poser is backwards compatible (I'm using PP Pro 2014 and yes, I paid for it).  I've got several books for Poser 7 and 8 but the examples they give are for props, not figures.    

GetStringRes
This references an internal dictionary. There are several in different languages but the reference number will always refer to the same thing. It saves having different language versions of all the files.

OBJ groups should always be single names with no spaces. Avoid the ":" character, if not actually dissallowed it will certainly confuse. Poser adds the ":1", ":2" indices when exporting which can be annoying. Group names must exactly match the names in the Poser file.

Thanks for the reply Phil but my question was rambling and unorganized....probably due to lack of sleep and a coupla beers (digging out from tropical storm Arthur).  I was mostly just pounding keys hoping something would work.  I've found a few good guides to the obj format and am making myself a cheat sheet.  I'd love the developers to release a similar guide to the CR2 file to accompany this.  The only CR2 file format guide I've found is much too technical.

the obj format has some g lines which are essentially body part names

material groups are the usemtl lines.

Here's the link to the unofficial CR2 format..http://www.kuroyumes-developmentzone.com/poserfilespec/actorprop_dec.html.

...and here's the one to the obj format....  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wavefront_.obj_file

From all the screwing around I've been doing I've gotten somewhat familiar with both file types but there are tags and lines that seem to do undocumented stuff.  In a few instances I've made changes in my file to match the lines in a working model from the Poser content folder only to have my model do something strange.  Somewhere in there (either the obj or cr2) is something that makes the model disappear, and no, it's not the visibility tags in the cr2, I checked that first thing.