hey how you doing, i know exactly what you mean and sorry to say, but i haven't YET found any solution similiar to max's. if there's one thing, (in my opinion) max destroys maya in architectural modeling. if you or anyone can show me a quick way to do this type of modeling, it would be soooooooo sweet. boolean is nice, but it's completely too slow and way too many steps compared to a spline and extrude.