Material Duplication on FBX Import

Development Rendering
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1

I feel this is probably answered somewhere but my google fu is failing me.

We have a scene in 3DX Max containing a lot of Car Engine components. The scene uses 1 Single multisub with different tiling materials for cast iron, brass, brushed aluminium etc.

Now we want a Folder/asset struct as the following:

Assets
	Engines
		SharedMaterials
		V6
			Blocks
			Heads
			Cranks
		V8
			Blocks
			Heads
			Cranks
		SharedMeshes
			Pistons
			Conrods
			Valves

But it seems unless the Materials are in the folder you import the FBX to, it can’t find and link to the common instance. Is their a solution to this? Or are we just going to have to accept the fact and have one folder with everything in it?