1. Open 3ds max and draw 2 planes, plane1 and plane2 having same height, width and segments unit.
2. Place both planes at same position so that they overlap eachother and looks single rather than 2 planes, let we place at origin.
Now it will looks single plane.
3. Now open material editor by pressing 'M' on keyboard , select an empty slot and name it solid, select another empty slot and name it wire and select the 
wire option, give same colour for both maps at diffuse. it will looks like this
Apply solid map to plane1 and wire map to plane2.
4. For rendering half solid and half wire we plays with the opacities of the objects, for that add Gradient Ramp into opacity map for both maps.
5. Do the Gradient Ramp settings for solid Map as below
and for wire map, just opposite to the solid map
6. Now hit F9, the rendered object will halfwire and halfsolid.
This trick is very effective for planer objects, for other objects do some uvw mapping.
