Take a look at this
http://starscenesoftware.com/objreader.html I think I may have an unfinished action for this in playmaker, have not touched it in several months but the get/set action will probably be helpful here.
while it only supports .obj format its a far more popular format than .3ds (that I am gathering you wanted as the link you posted referenced .3ds file format) and any 3d modeling program that can open a .3ds should easily export it to .obj format.