Hi, I am sure there is something obvious I am missing but…
When I create a set of vertices and want to create a face I am used to it generating the normal of the face based on the sequence I stitch the face (i.e. clockwise or counter-clockwise)… This doesn’t seem to be the case with blender :(. Is there an easy way to stitch so the normal is correct without having to go back and fix the normals later?
TIA!
I must say that, according to my experience, the method works in Blender too : you get the normals pointing towards you if you draw you tri or quad counter-clockwise and they point away if you draw clockwise.
How do you check the way normals are pointing ? The surest is to press “draw normals” at the bottom right of the edit buttons (F9). By default, faces in Blender are two-sided : maybe this is what’s misleading you ? Try to set off “double sided” at the top right of the edit buttons and see.
Hmmm I guess blender doesn’t like me 
I set “draw normals” and had extend the normals a bit so I can see them… That and the ugly smoothing were how I knew the normals were inverted. I played around with it a bit more and every other stitch I did in triangles had the right normal. Nothing I could do in the middle stitches (clockwise or counter-clockwise) would get the stitching to have correct normal.
Yeah 'm used to stitching counter-clockwise to set the normal. I think even OpenGL works that way… go figure 
I played around with it a bit more and every other stitch I did in triangles had the right normal. Nothing I could do in the middle stitches (clockwise or counter-clockwise) would get the stitching to have correct normal.
I don’t know the meaning of the word “stitching” as you use it (not being anglophone, you know…). Since you’ve had success in many cases I’d suggest that you just invert the normal where they don’t agree by selecting those faces (actually the vertices that make the face) and WKEY>Flip Normals. Sometimes ctrl+n (recalc normal outside) and ctrl+shift+n (recalc normal inside), when applied on selectec faces, can proove useful. All this is good inasmuch you don’t have to deal with too many rebel faces.
I don’t feel like I’m helping much. As you said first, it may very well be a detail, which I miss to notice too. Maybe someone else will put the finger right on it.
And oh yes, I’d bet that Blender likes you : it just have the strangest ways to show it at times… 
I appreciate the help. Actually, I didn’t know about the hotkeys you mentioned, so that would probably speed things up a lot for me, versus having to click “Reverse Normal” (or whatever the button name is).
You’re right about blender having a funny way of showing it 
Actually the name is ‘Flip Normals’ just the same and it is in the second column to the right of the edit buttons (F9).
Blender is an extremely condensed version of everything 3D. There’s a price in convenience for that level of miniaturisation. On the other hand, knowing Blender, a little POV-Ray and nothing else, it took me only four days of reading/practicing in Rhinoceros 2.0 before I could do enough with it for somebody to actually pay me for what I was able to do : so, everything learned in Blender had prooved useful. Call it though love.
Ciao
Jean
All I can say is ctrl-N: Recalc Normals. Try it.