So I'm using Wall Worm free on v2.964 on 3ds Max 2014, but I've had this problem for quite a few versions of wall worm as well.
I tried to open up a simple reference smd model, with one bone, but I still need the bone in order to modify a model.
What happens is that the bone is nowhere to be found, and the mesh itself seems to have taken on the name of the bone?
Here's an image for example:
(https://www.wallworm.net/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FAKXmqoP.png&hash=1c2486a4e153051dcb92ec03062676e0d1275820)
This has been troubling me for quite a while now, and I have noticed this even on models I made from scratch, and have decided to reimport as SMD. Thanks in advance if anyone could help me!
The importer chooses to use a mesh instead of a bone for any bone with meshes in the SMD. I'm coming down ill at the moment so I'll explain this more later. Whether an object is a bone or a node doesn't matter. It will work the same. There is no technical difference between a bone and a geometry node in Max in terms of exporting to SMD. The advantage in this case is that you don't need a skin modifier.
But I'll consider adding a feature to skip that method. For meshes that don't need a skin, like this example, it increases scene performance and cuts down complexity.
That would be a wonderful feature, as I generally use other imported SMDs as a size reference, and then keep the old bone for my new model.