Okay, Im using 3D Studio Max 5.1. I was undecided as to using NURBS or polygonal geometry at first. For non-organic objects I usually tend to go with polygonal geometry and surface tools (splines) which is what I went with here. I also see a possibility of being able to model this using Bryce but it would take much longer. The image of the unfinished, partial model above illustrates about an hour and a half worth of work this morning before going off to my appointments. I saved Zhanns sketch to disk and brought it into 3D Max to use as a template background.