Remove unseen (inner) polygons, preserve polygons on the surface

I am working on a project, involving the following steps for each of hundreds of models:

(1) Import the geometry model of a vehicle (.3ds format)
(2) Convert it to a polygon model
(3) Automatically remove all invisible polygons while preserving the visible surfaces intact
(4) Publish the resulting model on a website using webGL

Steps 1, 2 and 4 are relatively easy. I am having troubles with the third step. Two methods seem promising:

"fill all inner voids and fuse inner parts together" (processing the geometry model) or
"Use ray tracing and remove inner polygons" (processing the mesh model)

So far I've tried manual processing (editing each screw in the model is laborious) and automated processing of the mesh with a third party software (model quality was degraded).

Preserving original quality of the visible surfaces is a priority. What would be the standard way to achieve this task?

Thank you in advance,

Solution

Try the "defeature" option in 3ds max to reduce the size of the file. You can also select visible surface of a model in 3ds max by loading an assembly and then exporting visible surfaces only.