JR. I feel your pain. As an exercise I spent a little time last night trying to put a square hole into a curved surface and could not do it without pinching in the corners or creasing down the enitre model.

I just created a couple of curves and lofted them. Converted to polygon and then tried to put a rectangular opening in the surface while maintaining a smooth surface.

What a nightmare! If you try to put all the proper edge loops in the corners (3) they carry through the entire length of the surface giving you nice sharp visible creases. If you try to spread them out you still get pinching in the corners and lots of extra ugly geometry throughout your model that all has to be adjusted (very time consumming and the results are still bad).

I tried smoothing the surface and setting the divisions really high then using the sculpt tool to smooth out the edges and pinched corners and then set the divisions back to 0. All I can say to this excercise is that I still have not found a use for the sculpt tool (lol). It just made a real mess of the model.

I tried cutting up the geometry and making panels this worked the best but creates 4 panels around the square opening which is kind of a pain. Although if you plan them correctly it kind of looks natural.

I'll keep fiddling with it in my spare time and if I hit on anything I'll post it for you.

Keep plugin at it. I look forward to the final product. I wont be able to do any serious modeling until winter break. I need to finish rigging and animating my mech. I think I have to leg piston thingy worked out. Just don't have time to focus onit right now.