Hi rich, there are a couple of different ways. One way is to hide all edges, that will then leave you with only shaded faces showing. A quick way to hide all edges is to go to the Scene browser, types section. There is an entry there for Edges and there will be a little eye icon on the left side of it, push that to toggle all the edges currently in the model to hidden.

There are also some scripts you can set up on keyboard shortcuts, check out here for some various ones:
http://kyticka.webzdarma.cz/3d/moi/#ShadedDisplayMode


Another method that I usually use is to save to a mesh format like OBJ. As part of the save process on the mesh options dialog box that pops up you can switch the display to shaded only. That also lets you crank up the mesh density which can kind of give you a more accurate overall view of the surface. Then you cancel out of the save rather than actually saving anything. I do that a fair amount for surface quality inspection, if you want to set up a keyboard shortcut for that set the command part of the shortcut key to:
SaveAs c:\test.obj
By giving it an .obj filename there as part of the shortcut it will avoid having the file dialog pop up.

- Michael