Thanks Jan...first things first ;o). The Morris avatar is actually my own little kitty Stinky, who looks as though she's smiling while getting a bath from her big sister Tinks...lol. I love mine too :o). You'll have to forgive the names as my kids named them when they were still at home. Since they're 6 and 7 respectively, I'm not gonna change em now (the cats, not the kids...lol) ;o).

Now, ye olde thread you say? LOL...k....I don't model separate boxes. I model everything from the same box or cylinder. Therefore everything's already welded. The only things that aren't are things that I shell extrude or extract from that "box" or add on separately, such as buttons. If you do happen to have more than one box, you can bridge the faces between two objects and have them merge into one that way. Far as I know (I'm still learning modeling), those two faces must have the same number of verts (at least in Wings they do). For me, it's just easier to keep the thing whole while I'm doing it. Normally I'm working on one half of a mirrored object that I freeze later on when I think I'm done. Then I add the details like hems, buttons, ribbons, etc. What kobaltkween said gave me pause for thought, so I'm gonna go back a few dress iterations and restart on another dress; this one with the hems separate and not welded to the rest of the dress with the tiniest of gaps and see what happens. I do small experiments in Poser with dynamic cloth all the time just to see what happens...lol. A lot of the time I'm pleasantly suprised ;o).

As for grouping, I do that all with material zones. Sometimes I do actual grouping and leave groups in the finished prop, but it seems I have better luck if I make one solid group and just have material zones do all the grouping for constrained, soft decorated, et al. I set these zones up as I'm making the dress in Wings, selecting faces for each material zone and assigning them while I'm working.

If someone has a better way, please chime in...lol. I'm always looking for a better way ;o).

I hope I've explained myself in a way you can understand. I'm not always very glib...lol.

Laurie