about the only thing That I have found to make it easier is to drag from the Master Shaders in the Sequencer to each item in the Sequencer.... much faster than dragging items in the workspace... (if you didn't know that already..) one other Idea is... make your shader BEFORE importing, rename it default.. then when importing asign the shader? Not sure if it will work or not but it's worth a try....?
Hexagon, Carrara, Sculptris, and recently Sketchup.