DirectX 9 versus DirectX 10 legacy issues

So having implemented in Blender an data exporter add on which readily converted to a mesh/textures/materials exporter and thinking this might work for DirectX 10, while a promising link here would aid in importing mesh data.  First searched for functions like D3DXLoadMeshFromX (which were a DirectX 9 supported function), but I managed to come up with nothing here, but I did manage to find out that DirectX 10 apparently no longer supports the .X file format for mesh object importation.  Apparently there is a work around, however, that utilizes the much dreaded Autodesk format (dreaded for noob developers or those with less development resources here).  In any event, may look into creating a custom importation class for data, but not really sure.
http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/106138/626005.aspx