Hi Dmarmor, welcome to MoI!

Check out here for some links to discussions and general tips for people who are coming from a sub-d / poly modeling background:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4865.2

One big difference is that booleans and cutting operations are a primary way of doing things with NURBS modeling, and you want to work more with 2D curves to generate a lot of things rather than squishing things around with 3D point cages like you would with poly modeling.

If you find yourself trying to squish the points of a curve around in 3D, it's often a sign that area should be coming from an initially extended and more simple object with the final edge coming from a cutting operation, rather than trying to directly model it as you're showing there.


So for example probably do either a revolve or maybe a loft to build the initial shape, and to start with just ignore the bottom curved edge, build an extended piece to start with something like this (here a loft between 3 ellipse curves):



Then to customize the bottom part, draw in a new side profile curve something like this:



Then select the main piece, run Construct > Boolean > Difference, and use the side profile as the cutting object. That will divide the main solid into 2 pieces leaving the side walls of the side curve to form a sort of "imprint":






Usually to make things cook along quickly you want many of the final 3D edge curves of your model to be formed by this type of intersection or cutting operations, you should try to primarily draw 2D curves as much as possible and that's sort of the key thing to making things happen fast. And not only fast, it will also tend to make smoother results because irregularity in your construction curves will usually leave some sort of side effect in the surfaces constructed from them, you get better quality by making more simple surfaces and then more detailed outlines just come from carving the simple surface rather than a direct part of the initial surface construction...

It tends to be easier for poly modelers to recognize that an interior hole should come from a boolean operation, but it takes a bit more practice to get used to outside shapes coming from them too, that's the part to get used to. The link above goes over this concept with some other cases as well, the thing to get used to is sort of like "build extended and then cut". It's a very different type of strategy than what you use for poly modeling!

Hope this helps get you pointed in a good direction!

- Michael