Hi! Here is a very new blender user. I’m using Blender 2.71. When I’m in edit mode and I select all the faces in the cube the Subdivide function works well in all the six faces, dividing each face in four faces. And when I want to do the same selecting one face at a time I can only subdivide the first one and the command seems to do nothing in the other faces. Can someone explain this?
Subdividing the first face will produce n-gons (=polygons with more than four vertices) on the adjacent faces of the cube. Subdividing does not work reliably on n-gons.
subdividing a n-gon face will only add vertices to that face boundaries (it will only subdivide the ngon boundary edges), it will not divide that ngon into more faces like it does on quads or triangles.
As a solution you can subdivide 3 edges of another face, go into Vertex mode and join (J button!!!) them in a way that you need.
P.S. Do NOT press F button as it will NOT split the face and will NOT create a vertex at the intersection point!