Question about including assimp

[Dunmord]

Hey!

I've been going through the tutorials. A page suggests that Crystal Space has included assimp and that viewmesh should be able to load any model that assimp can load. However it's not clear to me if I have to do something to include the assimp library or does CS include it on it's own? Do I have to enable some preprocessor variables? My confusion was raised when I tried to load a .3ds model with Viewmesh.
The exact chain of errors was:
(The model is a tank)
            1) crystalspace.genmesh3dsfactoryloader.load: Can't find material 'M1_Abrams'!
            2) crystalspace.genmesh3dsfactoryloader.load: Error parsing the 3DS file!
            3) crystalspace.genmesh3dsfactoryloader.load: Error loading the 3DS file!
            4) crystalspace.maploader.parse: Model file not recognized (M1_Abrams.3DS)!

But I tried the assimp library by itself and it has no problems loading the model. So, what am I doing wrong here?