Why would you need a render farm to render the scene?
Are you using a 486?
Render times should be fine as long as you don't created incredibly complex images. For instance, walls can be one NURBS plane with no subdivisions. Don't use a 5000 poly plane or a NURBS surface with 100 isoparms.
In Maya, there is a duplicate option called "instancing". This allows you to create many sets of geometry based on one object. If you change the parent object, you change all of the instanced objects. This allows for smaller scene sizes, thereby lowering render times.
I did one project early on in college that was a church, a huge cathedral. I had over 600 pews in it. Uninstanced, the pews created a file size of 800mb's. With instancing the size remained around 200mb, a manageable size.
Sooo, if Max has instancing, use it!
<damn, that was a long, semi-pointless post, sorry!>
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