Hi Ronald,

> Is there a separate command to create a solid ?

No, just if you join together all pieces that touch each other so that all edges are joined between 2 surfaces, that makes a solid. When you have a solid, it will read as a "solid" as the object type in the properties panel:


If it reads as a "Joined srf" or "Surface" rather than "Solid" then it means there are some holes in the model where edges are not aligning closely enough with each other to get joined. To see where those edges are you can set up a "Select naked edges" script on a shortcut key as described here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=6051.2


> I joined all surfaces and assumed that creates a solid, but the normals are still not aligned.

I think it's because there are some squished down degenerate surfaces in there as well. If you have surfaces with self-intersecting trim boundaries or surfaces that are effectively squashed down to a line with no surface area those kinds of things can mess up the face traversal that the meshing mechanism uses to keep consistent face normals.

Here's one such little slivery surface that I found here:







> Ah, I found a command to flip the usernormals in Softimage. That seems to solve the problem for now :-)

Good!

- Michael