Um... since you're working in Max, you *should* be able to mesh it, and then use Select by Facet to create Groups, which you can then name appropriately. Rhino's a little easier to use for this stuff than many other programs, because with the 3.0+Bonus Tools, you can take NURBs surfaces, perform a bunch of Booleans to create your geometry, and then mesh it and explode the result, and the exploded mesh will then consist of every area with coplanar faces, which means that you don't have to Group things tri by tri.

But... you can create Groups directly in UVMapper or even in MS3D. It's just a matter of making sure that before you create the uv-maps, you've sorted your geometry out carefully, is all.

Okay, got the rough outline of the ship done last night. Man working in max makes things go fast for me.

I tried using the convert to-> Editable Mesh feature, but modeling like that was a pain in the ass. I find it so much easier to model with polys. So when I'm done I'll convert it to Mesh, then group it, then export it.

@ Argh
And how does it work? ( i mean making glow textures with Ms3d)