Your solution really works, BUT what you have done with all that exporting is
that you made UVW mapping into one piece, that's why your model is all gourouded.
Instead exporting several times, you could just apply a planar mapping in 3DSMax
and export your model into .3ds format and the result would be the same.

In addition there is another big BUT.
You can make your model in 3DSMax and export it to MED and make it look good,
in your way, or my way (it dosen't make any difference), BUT when you will need
to do mapping, you will be need to do it in MED(in my opinion mapping in MED is
very hard)to avoid mesh defection. If you do mapping in 3DSMax, you will have
to export your model to MED with defections and then manualy weld all those multiple
vertex to make the defected parts to look gourouded.

Or you could use other software to export your model to .MDL, like Blender(it's free), looks like it has an .MDL7 exporter