I've been trying to employ a technique i used in Hammer 3.x in Hammer 4, with some infuriating results.
The technique is simple: take a cylinder, slice it up horizontally at various spots using the clipping tool, and then while in VM, use ALT-E to scale various parts to give a "lathed" effect. This practice is great for simply and easily making a multitude of objects. The problem comes when i build one of these objects, save/close/reopen the map in Hammer 4, the vertices end up all askew, that is, where a group of vertices was once all lined up perfectly, they turn out all slightly out of phase with each other. This makes the compiled product look ugly indeed, because the objects that once were completely flush, now have all their vertices at slightly different coordinates, leading to visible gaps in-game. Is this a know issure for Hammer 4, or maybe, is it a glitch i'm encountering using 64-bit vista maybe? I've NEVER had this problem in Hammer 3.x. It's as if somehow Hammer 4 is realigning my vertices each time i reopen the map for anything that is not on the grid, and the effect gets worse the more times i close/reopen the map.
Another related technique/problem i'm having is in hammer 3.x, i used to build stuff entirely out of triangles, and make all sorts of crazy shapes and objects, with no error. Hammer 4 doesn't seem to deal with these objects very well, especially if you try to use the "ALT-E" scaling on a bunch of vertices.
And FINALLY, as a side note, I'm also noticing a problem with moving any sort of complex objects, I have to CONSTANTLY use CTRL-B to snap these objects to the grid. Even with the grid turned down all the way to 1, it seems hammer just can't deal very well with keeping them on the grid by itself. Is this also a known issue?
Phew. Does that make sense to anyone? I'll work on some example pics to illustrate the problem better.