yeah, I hear you P.

I started out doing only nurbs modeling. Back at maya 3 that was the primary way to model in maya. Machines back then could not handle the number of polygons that they can today and nurbs models were easier for systems and graphics cards to digest vs. lots of polygons.

Anyway, in the old nurbs method of modeling booleans and trims and fillets were used extensively and so I had an opportunity to learn all their quirks.

When I moved to polygon modeling I just naturally gravitated to using polygon booleans as I would use them in nurbs modeling. Polygon booleans have a whole new set of issues vs nurbs booleans that I had to figure out but I would say that in the end they were still worth learning to use.

I would really like to see better integration between nurbs and polygon modeling tools in maya. For instance it would be nice to project curves on poly surfaces, and take trimmed and filleted nurbs surfaces and convert them seamlessly to polygons.

Anyway, I hope the model and screen shots helped for the revolver cylinder and if anyone would like to see a camtasia video of the process just let me know and I will toss something together.