Hi
I have been making a chair and because it can be approached in different ways I tried out a few different ideas. I constructed the first model out of several parts and this had the advantage of making it easier to texture but there were a lot of non visible surfaces which inflated the number of polygons. Eventually I booleaned it all together as a single object. This made it marginally smaller in file size but more difficult to texture.

Now I'm wondering how a professional would approach such a model. Would it be best to make models that have separate components as in real life or merge separate items together so that the outer visible shell is all that there is?
Keith