[newman]

Yep, I often use autosmooth with a desired angle value and then manually fix up the rest if needed. Smoothing really isn't rocket science if you've got a modeling suite, like max, that can work it properly

[Quanto]

meh, my version max may just be weird, but I seriously need to detach in order to see the results of my smoothing.

[rhettro]

Thanks for the post Quanto.  I certainly would like to work in MAX, but being the hobbiest I am I'm trying to stick with low cost /free solutions.  Your examples look great BTW.

I'm intrigued by what Tharsis said about OBJ format not retaining the shading information.  I didn't really have a problem until I tried to make my model one continuous object.  I'll play around around a little bit more and see what I discover.