I worked as a mechanical engineer building models for finite element analysis in the automotive industry and I can tell you that maya's poly modeling and nurbs tools are sub standard for hard surface work!

I also worked for SGI as a senior systems engineer for high performance graphics and scientific computational analysis.

SGI owned maya for a short period while I worked there and I had the opportunity to chat with several of the programmers. I was also the SE account manager for ILM, Pixar, and Lucas Studios. On a side note I had a chance to watch the modeling and animation guys working on several parts of original Jurassic Park and Terminator movies.

I can tell you all they did for the nurbs portion of maya was implement inferior versions of the code from studiotools while leaving out critical features. That is why things like the round and fillet tools are so unstable and so many people are afraid to use Maya's nurbs tools beyond making blobby starting shapes to convert to a bazillion polys and then sculpt.

If you want accurate nurbs surface models you have to use programs like studiotools, autocad, rhino, solidworks, etc.

If you want better hard surface tools for poly modeling in maya then you either have to buy ridiculously expensive and version specific addons like NEX or write your own as legend suggests. I don't like either of those options.

I stand by what I said before: You can build nice looking hard surface stuff in Maya but it's HARD!

Legend: You say Maya is the "best"? This is based on what experience you have had with using what other surfacing applications? Poly modeling is not the same as surface modeling. Surface modeling is used for building actual things and include packages like autocad, studiotools, rhino, and solidworks and I have used all of them. In these packages you have very accurate control of bevels, chamfers, rounds, fillets and tangency and surface flow. These are all critical things in hard surface modeling not just for manufacturing but for any hard surface modeling. They are all sadly either very poorly implemented in the nurbs portion of maya or unstable or missing completely from the poly portion of maya!

Words like "easy" and "hard" are relative. If you have not used applications designed to build accurate hard surfaced things then what is your basis for comparison?

I started this model to give myself a break from a very long and stressful 10 months and the pressure is not subsiding, so I do not care to get into any more pissing contests! If my comments based on my experiences bothers people here I just won't bother to post my work anymore.

I have said about all I need to say on this topic.