Rhinoceros 3D Help

[Achille]

Is anyone on the forums familiar with Rhinoceros 3D? I got the trial to try it out, have been doing tutorials, and want to eventually model the ODST Drop Pod. I roughed out a basic shape using polylines to create polygons, but now I'm stuck. I can't figure out how to make my collection of lines into a solid. I've tried extrude, which doesn't keep the angles of the polygons when I extrude*, and Slab, which just makes... something that doesn't look remotely like what I want.



Here's a screenie of my model so far, again just basic rough shape:





Any ideas? Can I make my models this way, or do I need to constantly extrude solids into one another and take the difference?



*I've only tried extruding them all at once, and am about to try doing it one at a time. However, this will be slow, and I rather have a quick and easy way to do it.



EDIT: Nope, extruding one at a time doesn't work. Only get this mess of solids...



D:

 

[Belakor]

I've only used Rhino briefly, haven't had time to go back to it, but you'll most likely need to extrude the different sections in stages or extrude the overall shape at once and cut away the areas you don't need. You can probably use surfaces of some sort rather than solid bodies (extrudes) but that's beyond my knowledge in Rhino.



I'll dig out the Drop Pod model I've been working on and see if I can get some pics that might explain it better... should have them shortly...



Photos, don't know if they'll explain it as it is in my head but here goes...



Basically I extruded out the overall shape of the pod door:



The red sketch is a "3D sketch" of all the panels and the basic shape of the pod door for reference, doing one sketch like that first and then copying it over and over for each extrude is easier than doing the whole thing over and over. The yellow see-through stuff is what extrudes look like in SW as you're doing them.



Then sketched out the panels to cut away from the blocky first extrude:





and did the same for all the other panels until I had cut all the excess material away:





It's not the best way to do it but it worked, this is in SW though and may not transfer to Rhino well.

Hopefully someone here knows it a lot better than I do

 

[Achille]

extrude the overall shape at once and cut away the areas you don't need.

I tried that at first, but doing it this way is a lot easier for me to visualize. I'll do it using differences if I have to, but I'd rather be able to do it using polylines.



Also, I checked out SolidWorks, and I gotta say, I'm even more impressed with what you can do with it now, Belakor. It's much more complicated than Rhino to a newb, and feels (to me) as though you have less possibilities (Probably not true, but that was my first impression).



EDIT: I see... That's a lot simpler than my old way, I extruded the blocky outline, then tried to cut away using differences, rather than add on. I'll give it a shot, thanks.