Bullet: Im in the same room as you on that one. To my mind, as you say, hard surface modelling is just 'non-organic', basically man-made stuff, as opposed to natural stuff. I would say, whether smoothed or not, i.e, with beveled edges perhaps, or sub-divided at some point, a table is going to be a hard-surface model. Organic modelling to me is, you know, people, plants, , that kind of thing. As with everything I say though I would add the disclaimer of: dont take my word for it!!