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[Old Codger]

(This is likely a Steven question since he is the genius-level propeller head who created our marvelous toy.) 
What is the maximum number of edges which can be selected to create a single new face? I suspect there IS one since I tried selecting approx. 24 edges and the 'J" command did absolutely nothing. I WAS able to connect 8 faces successfully.

Also, does the ORDER in which the faces affect the normals on the resulting face? Many moons ago I used to play around with FS Design Studio - a GMAX-based 3D modeler optimized for creating aircraft models and scenery (buildings) - and unless you selected the points (it generated new polys/faces from points instead of edges) in the right order the normals on the poly could turn out really ODD! for example: Assume 4 points numbered clockwise from top left. If I selected them in proper order (1, 2, 3, 4) everything was okay. If I selected them in reverse order I got the normals reversed. If I selected the points in anything but sequential order it wound up with the normals "twisted" and the resulting poly looked more like a bow tie than a flat plate. Made for some interesting results. More than one time I had to flip polys or even delete the poly and reselect the points. I have a sneaking hunch I'm going to wind up using the "J" command to fill in spaces and would like to know about any lurking "gotchas" in the software. They all have them. Some of them are relatively benign and even humorous while others are "Holy SHITH!"  territory.

Back in the late 90s I worked as a non-degreed software test analyst. I used "Codebreaker" as my online handle 'cause I was good at making software puke its guts out. I literally wrote the book for the place I worked for. They had never had anybody go at testing software in the methodical way I did it. Before me all testing was pretty much ad hoc and - unsurprisingly - stuff escaped into the wild with some really nasty "quirks". I'm not too modest to say that, as a result of my interactions on a couple of online testing message boards, I was invited to submit a piece to "Software Testing and Quality Engineering Magazine". Was even published. Not bad for a guy with nothing more than an A.A.S. from the Community College of the Air Force, eh?

[Steve]

Old Codger The maximum number of edges that can be filled with the Edit->Fill-Holes (hot key J) is 12. The edges of the mesh are searched and only the selected ones are remembered. When a complete loop is found it is filled, trying to math the normal with any adjacent faces. This is not alway sposible if two adjacent faces have opposing normals, of course. If there are no adjacent faces to use as a guide then Anim8or chooses the normal based on the first 3 points that it happened to find. First loops of 3 are tried, then 4, etc. up to 12. Otherwise it could result in a big mess.

You can often clean up flipped normals with the Flip Normals and Fix Normals commands.

[Old Codger]

Thanks, Steven. YOU . . . . . . . . . DA . . . . . . . . . MAN! {knuckle bump}