Hi Rich_Art - it looks like you've got it solved now, your final render looks great!
So yeah usually the best workflow for something like this will be to construct a kind of broad surface that has the form that you want and then use that surface as a cutting object to slice off some material from your base solid.
If you wanted something that was totally straight then just slicing with a 2D curve would do the job for that, and it looks like that is what you did initially? That was actually the right idea that you should slice the end off but if you want a more sculptured type end you will need to model that as a surface and then use the surface as the cutting object rather than using a 2D curve as the cutting object.
That would look something like this - here I drew in 2 curves, then moved one over a bit and mirrored it:
Then Construct > Loft can be used to build a surface going through those curves:
Now select the main solid and run Boolean difference, and select that lofted surface as the cutting object, that will slice the solid into 2 solid pieces, basically leaving the imprint of the surface:
Then delete the portion you don't want:
Usually when you want something that is not a straight cut you will need to do some surface construction like this to make some of your cutting objects rather than only using 2D curves. But of course if you want straight cuts then just use 2D curves for those since that saves some surface construction steps. So it tends to speed construction by quite a bit if you do use 2D curves when you are able to.
The same technique can be used to put rounded caps on the ends of pieces as well, a few different examples of that:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4296.5
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=606.4
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2909.2
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2666.5
So anyway you were like 95 percent of the way there and using the right strategy, you just needed to make a more custom contoured surface for the cutting object rather than a 2D curve, but you had the right idea to build a solid and do a boolean in the first place.
- Michael
