Modeling approach?
 

Hey guys,
I've been trying to figure this out for a couple of days now, but I'm completely stumped.
I was trying to model a calculator but I ran into huge difficulties when making the different buttons. Basically, I've generalized the problem to this. How would one go about making this shape without using booleans:

http://www.student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~...a/3d/harsh.jpg

Essentially, I would like to keep the circular outline and have the hard square edges in the middle. I want to avoid using booleans and keep everything in quads. There has to be a way to do this. Everything i've tried so far leaves the circular outline pinched and I lose the shape I'm going for.

Your insights are greatly appreciated!

create the circle button, then use the split polygon tool to create the shapes that you want. --- Select the faces that you have just made and extrude faces---- (hit the center manipulator, make sure you give yourself enough resolution when extruding. --- stop when you've moved the extruded faces down enough to suite your tastes--- select and extract the originaly selected faces now at the bottom of the tube you just extruded. ---- Select the newly extracted object--delete history- select all of the faces and extrude up. When the button is as tall as you want it-- select the faces at the top of the new button, extrude-- select the center manipulator and uniformly scale them in( do this 2 or 3 times to give a smooth top when you convert to sub-d's or smooth polys).

Hope that helps

yes, I've tried that, but that results in circular buttons. I need perfectly square buttons. Adding more edges to the extrusions does make them square but these edges continue into the outer circle and deform it horribly. You can see my problem. I'm looking for an approach that wont ruin the outer circular shape.

WHY do the edges continuing to the outer circle deform it? if you just split the shape, the result shouldn't change the form of it at all.... it just adds a new division along that edge...