Hi SurlyBird, yeah definitely the cool part about NURBS modeling is that you can often make things happen quickly by using some drawn 2D profile curves.

One of the key things is to think about extended shapes - if your desired result has a kind of irregular shape in some area (like with the scalloped part in this case), try thinking if the irregularity is actually more of a cut away of a larger extended simple surface.

Then if you can build those more simple extended surfaces and cut them back or intersect them with other parts, that's when you're really using the toolset to its greatest advantage over polygon vertex pushing.

But it can take a while to get used to this method if you come from a polygon modeling background since it is quite a bit different.

When the model you're trying to make is not easily defined by 2D profile curves, like if it has a lot of little lumps and bumps in it or stuff like that, that's when poly vertex pushing would tend to be the way to go.

- Michael