>Anyway, I hope you don't think that I'm attacking your ideas or anything, I'm just trying to give a bit of an overview on some of the thinking behind MoI's design.

No, not at all! Just to explain, I'm coming from an architectural context. I have many years of "real-world" design experience, recently returned to graduate school and now teach part-time at the graduate level. Architecture school is ground zero for software experimentation, and students are quite catholic regarding the tools they use.

In recent years, the affordablity, precision (and, recently, the scripting abilities) of Rhino has firmly ensconced NURBS modeling as a default mode for architecture students everywhere. Professionally, you can see NURBS working overtime in the projects of architects like Zaha Hadid and Ali Rahim of Contemporary Architecture Practice.

>>There is a certain "flavor" or level of freeform that can be achieved just through drawing and not sculpting - for instance you can create a swoopy "freeform" surface using sweeping by drawing rails and cross-section curves.

This aptly describes much of Zaha's current work. You look at the renderings and can easily imagine all the profile curves along which surfaces have been created. This technique seems perfectly suited for her work since it is very very much about creating a sense of momentum through mulitple implied vectors. (Even the overall graphic of her website consists of a series of overlapping, filleted curves moving in various directions...)

>>So what I'm getting at is it really depends on the type of models that you're trying to build.

True. But, I've recently I've witnessed a slight shift away from NURBS modelling back to poly-modeling in the form of Sub-division surfaces (in Maya, Modo and a bit in 3ds Max). Sub-D models are often in the end indistinguishable from NURBS models though the workflow can definitely be more "sculptural" as you have noted. For product design, of course NURBS offer a precision for design profiles that you will not find in poly-based modeling.

>>So what I'm getting at is it really depends on the type of models that you're trying to build.

I also think this question can be turned around to read: "What types of models does the application afford you the possibility of making? [and] What new and unexpected possibilities for design does an application open up?"

With Moi, it currently seems that speed and intuitive informality with which one can work with NURBS geometry may perhaps lead to increased iterations of design study. If you can model complex geometry more painlessly, then you can simply draw more of it to analyze and evaluate from whatever design criteria you are operating on.

However, as a designer, I am always selfishly looking new tools which open up those fundamentally new opportunities for design exploration--if only in very subtle ways. Thus my suggestions will probably be slanted towards the creation of tools that don't yet seem to be available in any package...

But based on its current incarnation, I'm certain that whatever Moi evolves into will be cool and fun to use. The interface just plain rocks!