I have posted with lots of shading issues in the past and have appreciated all the helpful feedback and advice to date so thank you. I have tried to remember what I have learned along the way but I am a bit stumped after trying everything I can remember. The couch is UV mapped...I tried rendering it with smooth both on and off and the picture looked almost exactly the same...I want to be able to use this couch as part of a marketable scene in the future and of course the black couch cushion really isn't working! I have applied split edge to the couch as well...(It is modelled in blender...) The base was a seperate object. Then I modelled the cushion to follow its contour by making a copy of the bottom of the couch and then just finished building the mesh cushion...any ideas at all would be great. Thanks...H.

 did you check to see if the normals are pointing out ????

Yeah, normals would be the first thing I'd check, too. See if Blender has a command to display the normals for the selected object.  If you see they are reversed, select the offending polygons and execute a reverse normals command.  Also, you could load the OBJ into UV Mapper;  if the normals are reversed on the cushion, you'll see a hole where the cushion should be.

You might also check to make sure that you don't have duplicated polys occupying the same space.

Argh! I knew I was forgetting to check something obvious! I must make a list! Thank you!!! Thank you Thank you! H.