3ds max 9 doesn't work with BF42.
And without the BMDT tools working with 3ds max is way more uncomfortable than working with Gmax and their BMDT tools...
Autodesk did some heavy editing to the engine with 3ds max 8, so the only compatible versions of 3ds max are 5,6 and 7.
I got a old license from my dad, his company used 3ds max 7 and updated to 9 recently, so they gave the license for max 7 to their employees.
And working with Max 7 and BMDT really is WAY more comfortable than gmax.
More and very handy functions for import/export of meshes, a whole new category of "vehicle editing" which allows placement of all subobjects directly in 3ds max (it imports the vehicle specified directly from the .rfa, loads all models and meshes belonging to it as well as helper objects for invisible objects (e.g. camera, or grouped objects held by a helper) and places them at the coordinates defined in the objects.con of the vehicle...).
So now one can easily move around all the pieces of a vehicle as one likes and then reexport, so Max directly updates the objects.rfa and one can immediatly test the changes ingame.
God, I remember the times when I had to do those edits by trial&error...changing value, testing ingame, changing value, testing ingame...boy, that was timeconsuming.