> Yes of course, but i disagree that is a desirable path if one wants
> to appeal for conceptual work from Mechanical Design to Product Design.

I can totally understand that it's not a desirable path for your design needs.

There are however other people who can benefit from this type of rough model sketching, who do not need to iterate on fine surface details so much, especially early on for some just general massing type visualization.

Does this mean that these people are not doing "Conceptual work", or that they are not legitimately inside the field of "Mechanical Design", or "Product Design" ? I think that would be a rather narrow and restrictive view.

There is a legitimate place for MoI's approach to modeling within these fields. But at the same time I completely agree that it is not a universal solution to every type of design workflow.

There will certainly be many places where it will not be the right fit. It's a matter of using the right tool for the job at hand.

One of the big advantages to NURBS is that some of the techniques such as sweeping, booleans and trimming are quite easy to understand and use. There is more overlap with 2D illustration through curve drawing. This lowers the bar to entry for people who want to build some models (which could be called "concept models") but don't want to invest a huge amount of time to learn how the modeling tool works.

Imagine trying to teach a casual user how to build a model resembling their idea using XSI...

- Michael