Hi Rich_Art - and one thing I've definitely noticed is that often people coming from a poly modeling background really tend to do this kind of "create full 3D wireframe and then patch it in" type approach for everything. There's a tendency towards that since poly modeling tends to work with manipulating a 3D object the whole time.

But one of the greatest strengths of NURBS modeling is when you're able to create most of your model from 2D curves, since there is just less stuff involved with managing 2D curves, there's fewer things that you draw, like notice in the above example using a 2D "blueprint" type profile to create the shapes involves creating a smaller number of curves than doing a "patch by patch" type approach.

But it may take some time before you start to think about primarily using 2D curves to construct your object rather than building the full 3d wireframe of it to start with.

- Michael