XREFs and Material Changes?

[keyanhansen]

Scenario: We are working with a very large scene, 15-20 Million Polys, and navigating the scene is a nightmare. We're looking into hardware upgrades, but until then, we have tried XREFing each building in. (We're working with several buildings over several city blocks, each pretty moderately detailed.) We have XREF'd in, say 6 different buildings, each from a different reference scene, and each having certain walls that have the same brick material applied as the other 5, though not having all the same materials as the others.

 

Question: Is there a way for me to change the brick material in one of the XREF'd scenes and have it take effect on all 6 of the buildings that I have XREF'd in, without having to go in and change the material in each of the 6 reference scenes?

 

(Note: I am working with 3DS Max and V-Ray)