Well, I have spent considerable hours at this now, so I have tried a number of different paths.And yes, I created the model in Milkeshape. It is simple enough I could create it in MED, but I am trying to use this model in other projects as well.

So you are saying that interpenetrating primitives should not affect the mesh closure?

Welding the vertices after importing to MED does seem to reduce the closure count, but I end up with some strange face geometry. Since these models appear to render fine in other rendering environments, I'm guessing it is as you say, the import process into MED.

I have reconfigured the model so each primitive is distinct and separate from the others. I've tried exporting from Milkshape to 3ds, Milkshape Ascii, and I've tried from 3ds to Ultimate Unwrap and into 3dgs MDL. The last seems to work best, I get down to 3 or 4 open faces. The 3DS will work fine for me in Ogre and other renderers, I was just hoping to use 3DGS for prototyping. Importing shouldn't be this difficult. I was thinking it was something I was not understanding about constructing the meshes. But I don't think I want to re-weld 500 models. ;-)That's what the spec calls for.

Given Milkshape, Ultimate Unwrap and MED, can you suggest a possible pipeline to try that routes through those tools ending up with the least damage importing into MED?

Thanks again!