I hate to do the whole "In Lightwave we..." but it's probably the best way to say what I want to say. So, in Lightwave we can select a polygon on a piece of geometry and go to 'select connected' and the whole of that geometry will get selected as one part. Then you can take it and move it or put it in a new layer or what ever, the point being it's a way to grab that piece of geo.

The equivalent I can find in Maya would be to select some polygons on a piece of geometry and keep expanding the selection until that whole piece is selected.

The question is, is there a faster way to do that? More or less select the one face and do something that then selects all the other faces connected to it.