hi utpal

thanks for the response. yes I did delete history and all that (tho there was no history to delete after I duplicated - I did it without copying History).

as for your method of adding blend shapes - it still doesn't solve the problem of how to add shaes to the same blend node. what it does is it puts another blend node on top of the old one - so now when you want to control your blends you have to go between 2 nodes in the channel box / blend editor. I am trying to find out how more shapes can be added to the same blend node / operation once other operations have been performed (eg. mapping, skinning and smoothing)

thanks anyway!

cheers
Lisa