Ok, im going to go over the normal problem im having right now, clear that up then ill go over the problem i have with smooth making the geometery to dense...

Here is a cube...just for an easy example...Im going to be smoothing just the selected faces here because i want the bottom to retain its hard edges, and they dont need to be smoothed : )



this is the side view just so you can see how it is shading the bottom polys...






Now, when i Smooth the top i get discoloration in the bottom part of the mesh...this is really something i want to avoid...i want it to smooth the top without messing up the rest of the model



im not even sure if the normals are the problem because they look fine to me




if anyone knows why this is happening please let me know so that i can fix it : ) thanks