TIG,
I just wanted to thank you personally for this script. Trimble removed the (use color by layer materials) option from the 3ds export dialog, which breaks a method I've used for moving files between sketchup and max for years now. your script is the only way now to get the layer info into max. I don't know ruby, but I wrote a pretty sweet maxscript for exchanging files between sketchup and max. If you use max let me know.
thanks!
chris