How do you make the wires that go from pole to pole?

be more specific....

if you're talking about telephone or power wires, a simple way would be to make a basic mesh 5x5 and very narrow, then slope the middle down, then thicken it by 1 and then use the wire texture to create the look of the wire.......

if you dont thicken it, the wire texture will only show on 1 side.....

I suppose you could also make a long, skinny "barrell" and then slope the middle downwards..... but i think that would be overkill........ especially if theres alot of wires

looking into other map files the wires are an entity.
but i dont know how to set it up.

I know what you're talking about -- and you really don't want to use meshes or brushes for this.

What you want to use, is a new feature or effect included in the Hammer editor. This is outlined in my previous post about reading the Valve posted tutorials or functions of the editor. I sure can't say it any better than them, so without further ado: follow this link and you'll learn just how to do it:

Making Cables/Wires in Hammer

Have a look at this VTM it will give you a lot of help for what you want.
It is for a rope bridge but you can use it for what you want like telephone wires or to hang things from.
Not had a go my self yet just grabbing all the tutorials I can find to learn the basic bits 1st
N you just got there b4 me lol any way here is the VTM to help if any wants a 45mb download it is in QT not divX

halflife2.filefront.com/file/Hammer_Rope_Bridge_Video_Tutorial;34029

whoops... very very sorry... i didnt pay attention to this being a HL2 post.... my world is COD and UO......

Thanks works great