I've been overlapping parts of my meshes on the UV map to make room for more detailed textures. I used this method on a pair of shorts and it worked, even though it looked a little strange in CAS. CTU and TSRW don't work well with the package, and I THINK the layering is the cause. That was a really small mesh with only a little overlapping. I'm working on the UV map for a dress now, and I want to do the same thing on alternating bands across the body. I worked the back of the mesh into evenly spaced squares, partly because this mesh needed it, but mostly because it's a good starter for a lot of projects and it was such a mess. To make the alternating bands I'll need to rework the front of the dress too. As a reference mesh it's fine, but if I'm going to stack things on the UV map it needs to match the back. Before I go through all that effort, I want to be fairly certain all the overlapping is going to work. I plan to separate the front and back into 12 horizontal bands and stack 6 onto each of 2 textures. Has anyone done this before, and will it work?

you can overlap as much as you want.
CAS doesn't handle those layers very well as you said but it looks ok ingame.

Just make sure wat to overlap, so it still looks good
Also think ahead if you want to add a normalmap.

I never had any problems with either CTU or TSRW tho, only a display issue maybe?

Wat you also might want to try is to move each next layer exactly one tile outside the original uvmap, this might work for the CAS issue.
Still have to try that myself

I hadn't even thought about the normalmap. With this much overlapping, I think this one will have to do without.

I don't know WHAT was going on in TSRW. I could go in and edit the colors on the different channels, but whenever I tried to change a pattern it would Crash to Desktop. CTU acted like the patterns changed, but they wouldn't show up. If it isn't the overlap causing the problem I don't have any idea what's going on. The shorts have been in the moderation queue for 11 days now -- if they get approved maybe you or another guru can tell me what's going on.

I'm reworking the UV right now. What do you mean by ONE TILE? I'm offsetting the parts one mesh square along the X and Y axes. Is that what you mean?

yes, that is wat i mean....srry for my crappy english :P
Think you use a value of 1(or -1) for each axis to move them on to the neighbor uvmap

Thanks -- your english is awesome by the way!