please help - maya nonmanifold geometry

[nitishgautam]

hi!! how are you doing?

okay so here is my problem..i was working in maya and i am modelling a jetbike following a digital-tutors tutorial...

and...i came to a point where i modelled half of the engine cover and i took it to the other side by doing a -1 scale...and it was not aligned properly so i went and moved it to a little and combined the polygon and merged the vertices. this gave me my cover... -- http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/3044/65319053dc8.jpg

i want to convert it to sub-d so i go to the convert POLYGON TO SubD option and it says it cannot do it and i open up script editor and it tells me I have nonmanifold edges and i should go to MESH and CLEANUP...

so i go to CLEANUP with the settings as shown in the picture - http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/491/49139351jt5.jpg

ok so i go to the convert option again and it converted it to SUBDIV but it is looking very funny and ugly --
http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/2286/19594817kk8.jpg
http://img82.imageshack.us/img82/3673/88097002rk0.jpg

so thats my problem.....i was working on a car also earlier and it was showing the same problem..and i got fed up of cleaning it over and over so I just quit the project....i thought I mightve screwed up in that one so I quit but this time I think ive made no problem so I thought I should ask you..it really is becoming a pain of nonmanifold..

so if you could please tell me a way to fix it I would be very grateful. I am in desperate need and I dont want to quit the project again. Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you,
Waiting for your reply,
Nitish

Hiii man

that happened a bunch of times with me already

see those parts where it has some circles? acting wierd in sub-d... so, in most of times with me, what happened was: or that part had some holes, or to many faces (one under the oder) or unmerged vertices, so try to look very closely to it... delete faces, use append to polygon, merge vertices and convert back to sub-d and see if there is any progress...

Also check the normals! if you have any doubt on that let me know and I walk you though it...
and try, on the clean up menu, check " face with holes " to see if it works

this took me some time, because you dont realy know whats the problem... just have indicators (wierd behaviours in sub-d) that show you where to work in polygon mode.. so be ready to go back and forth between sub-ds and polygons a bunch of times until it works properly.

Hope that could help you man... there are no screts, just look in to it!