Deep Exploration is pretty awesome. I have DE Cad Edition v.5.5 and when I encounter a mesh that Carrara acts like a pig with, I run it through DE.
I have a few versions of Max (8, 2008 and 2009) and I think I need to reInstall DE because for some reason when I go to import/export to MAX, DE chokes and throws an error at me. But when that happens, I just use Carrara as my workaround.
