>>>No, this is not very likely as there are many kinds of models that are made up of more freeform surfaces that cannot be easily recognized by the direct modeling type approaches.

You are wright I did demo SpaceClaim some time ago and I must say I was not pleased with the way was handling surfaces from MoI or Rhino...Except that the workflow was very promising...
Thanks for the info I was not aware of it to be a general limitation...

>>>Don't get me wrong - that is certainly an important area of modeling! But there are also other kinds of design work out there as well different from that.

Not at all, "blobism" is part of what I do, so that creates more questions about the whole possess.

Perhaps DannyT could give us some info on how it works with Synchronous Technology in NX? (waiting for my demo). Ill Keep you posted.