"Element" with multiple assigned materials

[-Vormav-]

Elements are only broken apart based on whether or not the geometry shares edges. If you want to make a selection based on material assignments, instead of the way that their geometry is shared, then that's another matter.
You can pretty easily build selection sets for your different materials using the ID controls available in both editable meshes and polys. When you're in 'face' sub-object mode (or 'poly' sub-object mode for editable polys), scroll down to the 'Surface Properties' rollout from the modifier panel. Above the smoothing groups section, you should see an area for setting IDs. Just make a selection, pick a 'set ID' for that selection, and move on. Use the 'select id' option for selecting your IDs. You can use this in element mode as well, if you just need to be able to merge multiple separate-mesh elements of a single object into selection sets.
The only disadvantage here is that you won't get the corresponding names of the materials when you go to choose your selection, unless you're using a multi-subobject material and have clearly defined the names there (these IDs are intended to be used together with multi-subobject materials, but work just fine without them, too), which can make it difficult to work with. But a multi-subobject material might be exactly what you need in this case (unless you're using mental ray, which doesn't yet fully support this material). With multi-subobject, after the initial step of giving the different sections of your model different material ids, you can use the menu below the set id and select id options to select polygons based on their corresponding sub-material. Good workflow, unless, once again, you're working with MR.

[pdq]

Thanks Vormav, that is what I needed to know.

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