Hi SurlyBird, some of the proportions here would need to be adjusted but this may give you an idea on how you could use a solids approach to building this rather than going patch-by-patch.

One part of particular interest is probably how the scalloped parts are done here - notice that I don't attempt to create those directly to their final edges but instead create them as a longer sweep that then gets intersected with other pieces. The final edges come from those intersections rather than as directly drawn curves.


I started by making a circle that I split in half and then stuck some pieces out like this:



That gets extruded:



Now select these other parts of the initial profile segments (note the bottom circle half is selected now and not the top half) :



Those also get extruded but not as far, that produces another solid which you boolean difference away from the first piece to produce this:



Now for the scallopy parts - draw in a path curve that looks something like this:



Then a closed profile curve that looks something like this:




Then use Sweep to take that profile along the path curve, to make the part that will cut the scallops out, like this:



That sweep solid gets mirrored to the other side, and then both pieces are used as cutting objects in boolean difference to make this result:



Then some other lines drawn in and boolean difference again to carve off other pieces:









So that's a pretty good illustration on how you would use a solid modeling approach keeping things more as solids at each step to build something like this, rather than going around and building it one small individual surface patch at a time.


One thing you do need to be careful of when making something bendy like the scallop cutter piece here, is that it does not bend so tightly that it starts to bunch up and intersect itself.

- Michael