When you have the piece selected in pcreator does it give you the option to add the texture or is it greyed out? If you have it set for a battle model do you have textures checked?
I'm at work right now, but I will do my best to recall. I have been working under field model (although switching to battle model did not seem to make a difference for me) and I would pull down the drop down menu and check the texture option (texture file(s) or something like that?)
I would then go to the uv coordinates option which pops up a second window. Everything is greyed out and nothing shows but the blue axis lines. It by default is listed as view all. Selecting my model in the uv coordinate window does not change anything, either.
Is there a program other than 3ds max that allows you to export a .uvw file? I wonder if I can get a .uvw file then I could import that into pcreator and add textures...
The only other thing that I can think of right now is that somehow I have missed a step in blender that is not allowing the uv map to export properly with the object file. My only problem with that is that opening the file in wings3d or meshlab shows the texture just fine.
Maybe there is something going on with the model that doesn't agree with the .3ds format, like an open area or something that it doesn't like?