When creating adjacent objects (like a wall with a skirting board)
 

Should you combine them and connect their vertices, so you can adjust them to get rid of a hard edge? Say where a wall meet a skirting board - you could leave them seperate meshes, but a hard edge may show up where they meet. Guess what I'm asking is, should you combine and then merge all objects of this type (objects that would be joined in real life)?

thanks,

gubar

Depends.

When I made the stock for my rifle I left as many objects as I could by themselves (not combined) so I could keep the meshes simple and thus easy to modify. When two parts join together in real life, but there was no reason why I should do so in Maya, I made a division in it, moved some verts near the edge and moved the verts on the edge out away from object so when I made it smooth it would simulate soft edge without having to combine and merge them. Sorry if this is a bit incoherent...