I got a changes required- adding shadowing was suggested. Since the set is repository, which means that anything I added to the master texture would apply to all the pieces (and they're different shapes) - I decided to try adding a shadow mesh.
As the attached pics show- it worked on the master. I can't get it to work on the slaves. I even started over again, thinking maybe the shadow mesh needed to be added before the mesh was slaved to the master.
I swear I did the exact same steps: added a transparent shadow texture to the mesh in MilkShape, renamed it and exported it; imported it into SimPE- didn't change the "shadow" box; cloned a texure and imported the shadow .png (the black and grey image I made) using Extwhatever it is and import, not build; from there I didn't know for sure what to do so I looked at Blake_Boy's Tivoli coffee table since it's got a shadow mesh..that led me to adding a TXMT for the shadow and I copied all the values over. The last thing I did was add a SHPE for the shadow mesh.
There wasn't anything in the GMND or MMAT for the coffee table so I didn't add anything for my mesh. It worked for the master mesh. I can not get it to work for the others, even starting over.
I'm not even sure that's the way to do it, but it did work (beautifully!) for the master. Can anyone tell where I'm going wrong for the others? This set is in the queue..I can get more time but it was a request and the requester wants to use it for a challenge entry.

Hmmm. Double post, I know- sorry! I'm such an airhead sometimes. I still couldn't get the shadow mesh to show up and the ole light bulb went off. Clone my own mesh! Which worked. Why I didn't think of that before, I dunno.

This thread can be closed- or whatever. If someone can figure out why the same steps didn't work for the other meshes, that'd be great. But I guess it's not an issue considering cloning my own mesh worked. (BTW, I did the steps over and over and over again...the exact same things using the exact same base. I don't get it!)

It's possible that you may have removed the "shadow" group from your mesh by accident when you began working on one of the meshes. At least you fixed the problem.