First place to look... http://www.scriptspot.com/Main_Scripts.a...rchField=layers Harry's Layer Interface script might do ya. http://www.harrydechering.com/
i don't know if it seems like a silly thing for a high end prog not to have since you are the only person i've ever heard mentioning it i have never heard of a script or anything to do that, seems your best bet would be just to hide and render, if you keep the layers neat, or even just use groups it does not seem like it…
hehe yeah good call on the target weld...having recently moved from Maya to Max I definatly feel that Max has better poly modeling tools. Being able to just grab and edge, hold shift and drag to make a new one rocks my world. I haven't really been doing anything else though so I can't really say about the other…