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http://www.two-kings.de/
This is a very nice intro to direct3d in english.Step by step tutorial.
here is another you might like http://www.drunkenhyena.com/docs/d3d_tutorial.phtml

What I meant was there is not any usable data in the file unless that is what was meant to be in the file.

If you open your *.map file in a text editor you will see there is nothing but null characters in it.

You might try looking at these plot3d programs,open source and very well written,found them very helpful.Have looked at some of the other files but those stood out as well done....