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I'm working on modeling realistic furniture. A real drawer is not one piece, but six; a bottom, side, side, back, and front.

Like this: enter image description here

Having six separate objects is difficult to work with. But when you join them with Ctrl+J, you get this:

enter image description here

Which looks like an injection molded piece of plastic, instead of six individual pieces of wood nailed/glued together.

Joining them auto merges vertices. Now, it's said that it is not good practice to have vertices right on top of each other.

So the question is, how do you get an object that looks like it's made of multiple parts, but is inside of a single object for manageability, without violating best practices (like forcing vertices to occupy the same coordinates)?

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    $\begingroup$ One of the reasons doubled vertices aren't recommended is because seams and bleed-thru at the intersection tends to show up as white lines. However in your case if it works for you, why not keep the components separate and hold them together as a 'virtual'single object by using a common parent, such as an Empty? See here - blender.stackexchange.com/questions/166114/partial-rotation/… $\endgroup$ – Edgel3D Jul 20 '20 at 3:20
  • $\begingroup$ Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a way to use modifiers with this method... $\endgroup$ – Nick Jul 20 '20 at 4:31
  • $\begingroup$ Yes there is. Just parent an empty to the separate objects. That's it. Each object is still separate, they just move in tandem with the empty. $\endgroup$ – AxiomDes Jul 20 '20 at 5:44
  • $\begingroup$ You could just turn off auto-merge vertices on join. When you use a tool in the lower left of the VP there is a little drop down to adjust the parameters. Click that right after hitting CRTL J. Also duplicat vertices are necessary for sharp edges, not using doubles is "good practice" but it's no mantra. $\endgroup$ – Frederik Steinmetz Jul 20 '20 at 8:07
  • $\begingroup$ In the real world you would see a small gap between the different boards of the drawer. Add a small bevel to each of the walls, so that they are not perfectly flush and square. $\endgroup$ – no-can-do Jul 20 '20 at 9:01

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