Hi Neil,

> Do models need to be as perfect for woodworking as they do for rendering?

No I don't think so. You'd also want to generate a higher density mesh to really know what the surface is doing there. The realtime display mesh is more oriented towards generating stuff quickly. You can use it to get an idea of where to look closer but there are going to be various things that are just display artifacts.

One way you can do a high density view for more detailed checking is to export to an .obj file and slide the polygon density slider all the way to the right and then see what that shows, you can then cancel the export after you're done looking. If you like you can set up a shortcut key to do that so you can bypass the file name dialog. To do that set a shortcut like this where it's giving a file name as part of the shortcut:
SaveAs c:\bugs\test.obj

Make sure there's a space between the SaveAs and the filename.

I'd doubt that such a small nuance would come through any milling work though.

- Michael