The following topics provide the necessary information for reading and writing data from / to external files. MAXScript provides functions to read and write both text (ASCII) and binary files. It also allows reading and writing of keys from/to INI files.
3ds Max File Loading and Saving
Standard file dialogs for opening and saving external files. These can be used to let the user select an external file name for the script to process
The file properties are organized into three sets corresponding to the three pages in the Main Menu > File > File Properties dialog. This is standard MS Windows feature supported by .MAX files.
The GetDir and SetDir methods provide access to the 3ds Max system directories.
You can use symbolic pathnames anywhere a filename can be supplied to MAXScript..
Standard Open and Save File Dialogs
These methods display the standard 3ds Max file open, file save, or folder selection browser dialogs.
These methods let you extract parts of the file name like just the path, the base file name, the extension etc.
These methods let you collect files from directories, create directories and files, move and delete files and change their attributes etc. Using these methods, you can not only write scripts to let 3ds Max interact with external files, but even write general file-management scripts unrelated to 3ds Max and your 3D work.
The FileStream class implements text file input and output in MAXScript. The topic lists related methods
String parsing methods.
This method lets you append to strings in place without creating intermediate string copies in memory, thus reducing memory usage when building incremental strings, for example for dynamic rollouts.
MemStream and MemStreamMgr Interfaces
Interfaces for fast parsing by loading into memory.
BinStream for Binary Reading and Writing
Methods for reading and writing data from / to binary files.
Methods for reading and writing key values in .INI files