V-Ray & Smoothing Normals

[c2phace]

Quick question - can anyone explain how V-Ray interprets "smoothed normals"?

I was under the impression that this was just a way to clean up the appearance of edges in the Sketchup viewer, but V-Ray seems to honor these smoothed normals.

EXAMPLE:

I'm in the process of going through my model collection and splitting symmetrical models into 2 components (mirrored) to reduce file sizes. Now I'm realizing these new seams are visible in renderings.

Any options to have v-ray smooth all normals by default and ignore the sketchup settings?