As you know there are many ways of completing a task in Maya. I'm not quite sure I understand if this is what your looking for. Have you gone to help in your Maya menue bar & looked for "bevel"? When bevel opens, In there try Surfaces > Bevel Plus.

Many would create an 8 in Create > Text opts, or create an 8 with a cv curve & extrude it with a circle or square. In the 1st you could select poly. The latter would be a nurb, but if your comfortable with polys just convert it into a poly. If I'm on the wrong track maybe re describe the problem or post a photo.

There are other ways also. A good exersize & learning experience for this site might be creating a simple agreed on object. People could post Not necessarily their way of creating it, but a WAY to build it. A different technique each time ( though it may not be the easiest ) Then all can learn different techniques or approaches to the same problem.

Not just a modeling post, but Dynamics, Animation . . . I noticed something similar with "post an expression", or "post your secret" . . . Have fun