Hi, Im no expert yet if you approached with simple poly in mind, Max will work wondes for you.

No splines eetc as that generates more polys than faces.
Remeber that all faces are triangulated when exported to Med.
Use edge extrude to build.
Ensure measurement is set to Med (something 1 : 0.001 or similar, dont remeber)

Bake all generated textures then export as bmap for skins.

Wooooops.....Set all lights in Wed untill you work out Max and Med export.

Save as both FBX and mdl7.

If FBX fails, import model into MED for convex conversion.

Use simple textures mostly.

Thats all I remeber, hope it helps