Just to add another note to this discussion. After nomuse's posts I went back and tried using the Naming function in the vertex room some more. This WOULD actually be a very useful feature except for the fact that virtuall every action I took that modified the mesh of the object erased the name groups. Adding points, removing points, thickness, etc. erased the names. Moving the points by selecting either individual points or using the marquee tool seemed to retain the names but as nomuse said the lasso tool erased them. 

Also if an object is brought into Carrara that had the mesh seprated in UVMapper or any other program (as in UVM's planar function with "split by orientation" active) can cause problems as Carrara re connects the vertices at the "split" and even shifts them around causing some pretty sever map stretching across the area of the split, the only way to avoid this seems to be to physically split the object into 2 elements.

After saying all of this I still ahve to say that the most reliable method is still to use the Materials or Shading Domains to differentiate the groups and make them selectable in UVMapper and/or Poser. 

mike