Overlapping uv's

[ajjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj]

Hi Autodesk.

Im trying to AO map an old game mesh to teach myself how to AO map. But i have a problem. The uv's are overlapping. Is my only option to detach all the overlapping faces with uv's?

Or is it possible to make the uv area larger? (i think the original texture is 512x512). 

I mean add an unwrapuv modifier and render the wireframe in 512x512. Then make a 1024x1024 in gimp and paste the uv-map in 4 corners. Then change the uv-map plane size to 1024-1024 and move the overlapping parts to each corner? 

Or is this impossible and would move the uv-mapping coordinates?

[RobH2]

UVs take a bit of a learning curve. Can you show a few screen shots of what your are working on? It's hard to help you without knowing what you are looking at. 

[ajjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj]

Thanks for the response Rob!

I think i might have fixed it. Since the overlapping parts use the same texture/material can i just apply "pack uv's" then render to texture?

Also unrelated but how can one "attach" parts without damageing normals?, in the past i've just selected all meshes then "collapse all"