Smoothing problem
 

Ok. I never thought I'd be asking this, but how do you smooth out faces? I have used Polygons>Smooth a million times, but for some reason it doesn't want to work now. At first, I thought it might just be a problem with the geometry I was working with, so I tested it on a simpler object. Unfortunately, I got the same results. Here's the problem...

I take 2 10x10 poly planes, one at 90 degrees and the other flat, and lines up their edges so it looks like an "L" in side view. I combine them into one object, then merge the vertices at the angle so it is truely one piece of geometry. I then select faces on either side of the angle and choose Polygons>Smooth. The problem is that it doesn't actually smooth anything out. What happens is the equivilance of selecting the same faces and subdividing them. I am left with a hard angle in the end, which should not happen. I can't imagine why this is happening. Am I dreaming or is this how it always works?

Oh, one more thing. I just found out that it works fine if I smooth out several faces on a regular plane. It only seems to not work on faces where I combine two planes. Even so, it still shouldn't do that should it?

You're not dreaming. It's working correctly. What you are doing is smoothing the geometry, and I think what you want to do is smooth the shading -- two different but related elements.

To smooth the shading on the object, you need to average the normals along that hard edge. Simplest method is to select the poly shape and select Edit Polygons | Normals | Average Normals. Average Normals can operate at the component level, so you can experiment with that as well.

Well, I tried all that and I still have the same problem. Any other ideas?

split up the planes and try the smooth again