Hi Matt, so it is also possible to do the whole shape in one loft using the Loft style = "Straight" option.

To do it this way you would set up curves like this, cutting them at these lines with the Edit > Trim command so there are some curve segment ends there that you can move later. You want all the curves to have the same number of segments for this method:


Then you arrange them vertically like so, using Ctrl+drag twice to drag off a copy:


Turn on control points for the middle ones and drag these points downwards:





Then you can select all the curves and run Construct > Loft, using the Loft style = "Straight" option to make this result:


This is however a lesser quality result than the method above, you can see that there is more fragmentation in it. Filleting in particular will not like how the coplanar areas are fragmented in multiple pieces. You can fix it by deleting those coplanar areas and then using Construct > Planar to fill in new larger planes:






I would encourage you though to approach things more like the other method I posted method where you're thinking more about building extended pieces where possible and cutting them rather than trying to shape things in 3D directly from the start. That's what takes some getting used to when coming from a poly modeling background.

The extended base shape + boolean cut method also helps in more general situations like if you have some curved shape instead of lines:




That then becomes better and better to be driving things by 2D curves rather than trying to pull some large number of control points around in 3D.

- Michael