You still need to make separate channel for lightmap. Though I presonally really didn't cared for it. I just used flattern mapping in max or atlas mapping in modo, or just copied my first channel and used autopacking on full mesh. Model importing is the same.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revision_control You could think of it being like autobak for 3dsmax but it also links comments to your files. Or a way of saving "undo" versions across a project.