I've been messing around with this for hours. Any ideas on how to efficiently  model it? I have Max, but I'm determined to do this in Carrara!

You could do it in4 pieces with the spline modeler.  Then duplicate the pieces.  The corner piece, the side outer piece, the flat square inner piece, and the inner disk piece.

I'd say that would be almost too easy with Wings 3D's new (0.99.04) toolset changes, and then just importing the .obj into Carrara. :tt2: But if you must insist on doing it in Carrara, I'm sure someone will eventually come around to show you the way.

I was able to duplicate that cube in about 10 minutes in C6 Pro.  Create separate objects for the side edges, the corner, the inner cubes and the round item.  Then just duplicate as many pieces as needed and assemble it.  The spline modeler works fine for it.

Thanks for the input guys! I was definitely going about this all wrong; In Max my first attempt was to make it out of a single cube primitive with some extrusions and Boolean operations. What I ended up with was way in the hell too messy and heavy for what I need.
Sparrownightmare-If you get the chance I'd love to see some screens of your method.
Thanks everybody :)

I zapped the file. But I will redo it when I get a chance, and put up a small render.

Just to show I wasn't making up what I said earlier. But perhaps the mesh is a little messy despite how the smoothed preview makes it appear. Not sure what I'll do with it though.

Mess Schmessy, great job Paul! I'm amazed that you did this in Wings, I haven't thought about that app. in years. I think all the fancy tools I'm accustomed to in Max made me forget the beauty of actually having some modeling skills. If that makes any sense :)

If you haven't been to it in years, might be worth another visit. It's been building up it's repoitore and incorporating many of the plug-in tools into the main build. You might be suprised as to what's in there. But enough plugging that app on the Carrara forum. :laugh: Oh yeah - the pic is how it looks in Carrara.