Hi Mike,

Thanks for the kind words. Glad the tuts helped out. 

The spline modeler actually assigns shading domains automatically. You an rename them though. Essentially, it's front, back and then one for each side - in this case, the interior of each hole. For a shape like this, I'd do a full line version in Illustrator including the holes and set up my compound holes there and just import it to Carrara. 

A note on triangles vs. quads: The purest will say that you should only use quads. This is true for organic shapes that will be bending like people and animals etc. However, for hard edge shapes, it really doesn't matter. As long as you can crease edges, the flat spots can be either quads or triangles. The only difference is, that every quad adds geometry to your file because of hte extra edge and point. Quads can be  a little easier to work with in the UV editor, though. 

Mark