Hi pelanglo,

> The problem is that the spout has a giant surface (in the
> real world) that runs from the opening where the water
> comes out, along the side and then wraps up around the
> circumference at the back.

Can you post an image of this big surface so we can get a better idea of what it looks like?

But yeah for a large flowing surface you're most likely going to be drawing in some guide curves and using either Sweep or Network to construct the surface from those guides.

One thing I notice from your screenshot above is that it looks like you're building your spout by building just individual surfaces edge-to-edge that fill in a wireframe outline.

That can work, but a lot of times it can be easier to initially build a larger more complete solid to start with and then carve off scalloped out bits using a boolean command, rather than trying to directly build each little surface directly and individually. Incorporating some cutting operations rather than only all edge-to-edge surfacing can tend to make things a lot easier.

So for instance to make a cut out part you might start with a solid like this:



Then go to a side view and draw in a 2D curve something like this:



Then select the solid, in the 3D view it looks like this:



Then run the Construct > Boolean > Difference command, and select the 2D curve as the cutting object. That will slice the solid up into 2 pieces by the projection of the 2D curve - select this piece here:



And then just delete that piece you don't want to get this result:



So note that the key thing here is that a portion of the final model came from a cutting operation that was done by a 2D curve (where the projection of that 2D curve becomes part of the model), instead of trying to build a full 3D outline of those edges and trying to build a surface directly between those 3D outlines.

If you have any area of a model that seems like it is a carved away portion, it's generally much better to model it in that actual way, starting with a larger extended piece and then carving it.

This is the area where a NURBS modeler is very different than a polygon based modeler - you want to use booleans and cutting operations as a primary way of working with NURBS when possible, while in a polygon modeler you are probably used to avoiding them and only using them as a last resort.

- Michael