I have ICQ and AIM, both of which should be listed in my profile.
Bob, I try, at all times, to unify my meshes. If that means using a boolean and working some geometry around to seal it smoothly, that's what I do. I don't like having bits hanging near each other that don't share vertices, nor do I like have polygons that are hidden/occluded by other parts of a model (the Orion's spiky bits come to mind). In the original (30k) version, most of the polys were spent edging things or making them more round. The bulk of the geometry is fairly bare, leaving detail to the texture artists. Only in places where there's a detail that I wanted detailed pretty clearly, did I spend geometry (like on docing clamps or hatches. the original has seven hatches and an internal beam generator).
Which part did you rebuild Bob, and exactly why? Everything should have been built with a multiple-of-five cylinder at its base, so you shouldn't have had to modify anything to keep the symmetry.
