Hi there samuel, i'm mesraem and i'm new to this forum. I've been experiencing this kind of problem sometime ago when i imported .3ds file to sketchup but i have no clues yet on how to resolve it, well anyways i just want to share this site to you http://www.i-urban.net it has lots of free max files and other format that could be imported directly to sketchup like .dwg/.dxf file and .3ds as well.