You can try:
Polygon > Seperate in Maya 7 or below
or
Mesh > Seperate in Maya 8 and above
But this still depends on how it was built in the first place, other that that you would need to select the faces you need to seperate and use the Edit Mesh > Duplicate Face command
Chris (formerly R@nSiD)
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When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will truely know peace - Jimmy Hendrix
Winner SM VFX Challenge 1
3rd Place SM SteamPunk Challenge (May 2007)