I really don't see what was your problem with smoothing, but perhaps you solved that? If you have a drawing override for a model and can't change it in the attribute editor, it must be because your model is assigned to a layer, so the layer is controlling the override, and it seems like you are having that layer set to…
Very odd, and I'm certain it's not a bug. What does your script editor window say? What happens if you click on the polySmoothFace attribute of the mesh and change values? If you posted a pic of the mesh and the polySmoothFace attribute values, I'm sure we could figure it out. These values that work for me in 8.0 :
I'm not quite sure how to relate that to my own situation; I'm learning Maya for my Intro to 3d modelling class, and at this point in the process I don't know Mel script. Given that I have about two weeks to finish this and three other classes to study for it doesn't seem prudent to try and learn it, so I can't analyze the…
There's another problem. I wrote this after I closed down Maya, and I just brought it back up to reopen my file, and evidently the part that was in question is now gone from the viewports. Here's the scene itself, along with what's going on in the script editor. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v416/temetry/maya1.jpg…