Took me a while, but this method of defining rough shapes and then filleting, finally clicked in my head last week when I was modelling a cell phone. I started out trying to lay down some contour curves, but it quickly got difficult to manage. So I started over and just roughly blocked out some shapes and then applied a fillet. It's a much faster workflow and it made me look smarter than I actually am. :-]

< just roughly blocked out some shapes and then applied a fillet.

That is the secret !

Hi TwinSnakes, that's great that method is clicking!

It takes a while to get used to it - basically when you look at a shape and there is some mixture of broad shapes and then some more tightly bent areas try to temporarily ignore the tightly bent transition areas since those are indicative of fillets.

The other kind of thing is not getting too focused on building surfaces that directly hug to some irregular outline - usually you want to build an extended surface and then cut it rather than trying to construct the surface initially to such an outline. That kind of thing with visualizing extended areas of the model earlier on in the process can sometimes take a while to get the hang of as well.

- Michael

Many thanks for your help. I am very grateful for the solution paths