Hi Steve. It is a legitimate problem. Modo has tools for setting up UV's. But for certain types of surfaces, even simple ones like a revolved disc there is no easy way to get uniform UVs to match the desired concentric anisotropy. Well, there is a method using morph targets, reshape the surface into a cylinder, apply UV's, relax the morph, etc.... But the best and fastest way is just use the inherent UVs from the original Nurbs model. Now imagine the surface can be much more complex than the example i posted (which in fact, they usually are) and you'll understand why i don't want to spend time (possibly a LOT of it) to make UV's by hand which are inferior to the originals anyway. I need to spend as little time as possible setting up a render if I am to expect to meet my deadlines. And i do expect to! :)

For the moment, I am using Rhino to export all components which we're producing in various metal fabrications (about 60-70% of my workload) until i have the free time to experiment...

jonah