Yep it is inevitable and even if I mostly use Archicad and not Revit, principle is the same one needs to do manual layering merging and cleaning, there's no other way (
What is the most frustrating, that there is nothing close to bim like floor\elevation\section system in max - and how much it would benefit all of us archvizers out there is hard to understate, well a lot - just imagine manually placeable floor and elevation views with a max and min object viewable heights\distances )), and what's even more frustrating thing about it is what, I believe, it would be possible to do using some not so complex tools done in maxscript combining currently available 3dsmax's viewport clipping and layering features into something like that system, yet no one, nor the people capable of doing it, nor autodesk (though they don't do that for obvious reasons) seems to care.
One useful tip to add besides rambling would be this
rather basic but often missed trick which is very useful for working on some specific part of the building or some larger scene in general )
And yeah - don't forget editable mesh with it's hidden edges function - when you finish editing some, let's say, walls with all their crappily cut out windows doors etc. it an be quite handy to convert them to editable mesh (if done by edit mesh modifier then all non mesh editing modifiers like uvw maps or something like corona displacement can be preserved) and hide all those nasty cad\bim generated edges (or any not so nasty but still distracting support loops etc) to later work with somewhat cleaner or at least more pleasant looking model - takes not too much of a time to do but can make navigation in 2d wireframe views way less frustrating and WAY less distracting for sure - as an example think of how the sketchup's geometry's realy looks like and how the user sees it and interacts with it in it's viewport )