Help applying skin to model

I am trying to make a custom skin for a custom model, but i am having a little trouble mapping the surfaces so i can skin it... is there an easier way to make a map for skinning besides Detaching each poly/face and lining them up in a 2d manner in a view...is there some command to automatically make a skinning map for all the surfaces in a model...???emote_confused

Note: I use gmax and ms3d.

Note 2: Im gonna go ahead and make this thread in the skinning forum too, because it kinda belongs in a combination of the 2 forums...IMO