I have a sample model of a cube and a buddha downloaded from internet in 3ds format which I can load correctly into my program and view them without problem, but wanted to try and create my own model.

I created a simple box mesh in 3ds max, and exported it as .3ds (Converted to mesh -> export as .3ds)
When inspecting the .3ds file with a hex viewer, I was expecting to see 8 vertexes and 12 faces declared (as the model I downloaded from internet). But what i found was that it listed 26 vertexes, and 12 faces! And when I try to load that file with my .3ds viewer, my parser isn't detecting the face block (0x4120), which is strange because it worked for other objects downloaded from internet.

Do I have to set any special property in order to export a 3ds file with minimum vertexes and a vertex-index list?