Have you tried to use obj-format instead. The problem with 3ds is, that it's a binary format with no official documentation. Try to export the files in a way, that no additional transformations will be stored in the file, because these are causing the most problems.
Anyway, what exactly do you mean by "not load at all"? Is there some error while loading them? If so, it might help to know which. If they actually load fine and just aren't visible, it might as well be an issue of scaling (object is too large or too small after loading) or object space is far off (i.e. the center of the object isn't located around 0,0,0 in object space but somewhere else, which might be out of screen).