Hard / Soft Edge

I've been working on a script to get the maya way of handling smoothing into max. To some people, setting which edges should be hard and which should be soft makes more sense than the use of smoothing groups. I personally think that they both have their uses, in different situations.
I hope that this script can be a useful tool to speed up the modeling process.

Examples:
#1: The basic functionality of the script. You select an edgeloop, and set the edges to be hard.

#2:
Let's say you've got a model in which you want two edges to be hard.
Simply select the edges, set them to hard, and you're done. No more
time consuming messing around with assigning different smoothing groups.

#3:
To create banding on an unsmoothed sphere, you simply select one edge,
make a ring selection, then a loop selection. Then apply the 'soft
edge' script, and it's done. You can of course also do this the other
way around, by starting with a smooth sphere and setting edges to hard.

Installation:

* Close 3dsmax.
* Unzip the contents of the package into the folder [your3dsmaxdirectory]/Scripts/startup/

* Start 3dsmax.

* In the customize user interface dialog, you'll find a 'set hard edge' and a 'set soft edge' command, under the catagory 'Hard / Soft Edge'.
* Assign it to a hotkey, quad menu, toolbar or whatever you prefer.

Usage:

* Select an editable poly.

* Select one or multiple edges.
* Start the macroscript for a hard or soft edge.

* Be amazed (optional).

Known issues and limitations:
There are a couple of things you should take into account when using this script:

* The script is not optimized! It processes the edge selection per-edge, meaning that it can 'make a mess' of your smoothing groups. I've tried to keep this to a minimum, without having to do complicated optimization algorithms.
From the tests I did so far, I have encountered no problems, but I'm not guaranteeing that there will be no smoothing group conflicts when used intensively. Please keep this in mind when using the script. Use it as an addition to smoothing groups, rather than a replacement.

* The script is simulating the hard/soft edge functionality, it's not changing the way smoothing works in max. It sets smoothing groups according to the input. This means that you can mix the usage of smoothing groups and the hard/soft edge tool.

* When you are using this script on edges that are connected to a vertex which is shared by more than 16 edges, the smoothing isn't working correctly. For example, the top of a sphere with more than 16 segments.

* The script only works with Editable Poly, not with an object with an Edit Poly modifier, or Editable Mesh. This is due to the way maxscript can perform actions on these different objects.
* I have tested the script only in max9, 32bits. I don't expect any issues with (slightly) older versions though.