Extruding face "groups"?

[wsimike]

Hello,

I've been trying to achieve a certain effect with AC3D and can't seem to get it to work. The general effect is of a rounded pillar (or any shape, really) with certain patterns "built in" to its core structure.. grooves and what-not.

The best way to describe it is just to show you what I'm trying to create..

Check the following screenshot:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...73/pillars.jpg

This is a screen-capture from Final Fantasy XI (inside Hall of Gods for those of you who might happen to play :-). Notice how the pillars with the statues along the right side have those cool patterns "carved" into them? I'm trying to get that sort of effect.

The process I'm taking is, making a cylinder with several sides, say 10 or so. and several segments along the Y axis. Then, with "click-through" enabled I'm grabbing vertices and sliding them up and down to get a given pattern. The resulting pattern is what I'd like to have "carved".

Now.. I've tried beveling and extruding and in all cases, the problem is that each face is being treated as an individual face - even when a contiguous group of them is selected. There's a polygon (perhaps two in the same space) separating each face around the entire circumference.

Now, I've seen options in other 3D programs where groups of polys/faces are treated as one and you end up with the entire set being extruded as a single piece.. not as individual faces. Does AC3D have anything like this?

If not.. is there another approach I might take to achieving this effect?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Mike