Hi Mike,

> only problem is when you convert a solid to a surface, it
> has faceted sides, and if you the change it back to a solid,
> you end up with a solid with faceted sides.

Yes, but that "only problem" is a huge problem because having your entire solid model turn into a solid model with flat facets will usually pretty much destroy your model. After you've done that you've basically lost many of the nice properties of solids modeling, stuff like having actual precise spheres and cylinders and all of that stuff.

Also since now your solid model is itself faceted, everything that you export to will think that the model is actually supposed to be totally faceted so you'll get flat shaded appearance in renderings, etc... Having a solid model that's made up of all facets is not good, unless it is supposed to be physically faceted like a diamond or something only made of boxes.

Getting a bunch of facets as your solid model is not the same thing as making facets for exporting to a polygon format like OBJ - polygon files are supposed to be made up of facets. Solids modeling data is supposed to be made up of broad curved surfaces, stuff like one sphere surface for a spherical piece of the model, etc...

- Michael