Layers in 3ds Max allow the user to group numerous scene objects together for easier workflow. Nodes contain information about what layers they are associated with. Accessing layer information in 3ds Max can be done in two methods:

1. Iterating over the scene layers and then accessing the nodes that belong on that layer.
2. Iterating over the scene objects and then accessing the layer that the node belongs to.

There are two classes that describe layer properties.

1. ILayer
2. ILayerProperties

ILayerProperties has some of the same functionality of ILayer but also provided a method that returns a list of objects that belong to the layer.