Okay, guys.  I've been a 3dsmax user for many years. I've had jobs and worked in studios, freelance, with the software, and specialize in texturing and modelling.  In the past year or so, I've grown concerned about the future of my software. Autodesk seems to have love affair only with Maya, and neglects it's other software aside from Autocad and Maya.  THey recently let Softimage XSI go, and while they claim 3dsmax is still high on their priority, I don't believe them.  So I began to learn Blender as a backup.

That said, it's been a very steep transition, and the way Blender works, compared to most other packages, is very unintuitive.  I guess if it were the first package I ever learned, it would be easier to get used to, but coming from a package with more conventional workflow, Blender has proven difficult to get used to.  I have found the latest versions a lot better though.  Especially 2.73 with pie menus.  The pie menus addon, and visual icons have really helped me find a lot of features much easier, and helped with the learning curve.

There's still a lot of things I'm used to in 3dsmax that don't translate easily to Blender.  One of the most frustrating things is I can not find how to select sub-elements of a multi-part object.  For example, I have a model I did in Max, and imported it into Blender scene.  The model is a single object, but has many parts to it.  I want to select certain parts in edit mode, but the only sub-element levels Blender has are vertex, edge, and face.  There's no "element" selection in edit mode.  So what is a fast, easy way to select certain parts of an object, instead of selecting by polygon or faces?  If I wanna select all polygons on just the pillow on a bed,  but the bed is all one object?  In 3dsmax, there's an "Element" mode, which allows me to select all the polygons associated with sub-components of a model all at once.  How do we do this in Blender?

I'll have more questions, I'm sure... thanks to anyone who knows.

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Tools :  3dsmax 2015, Daz Studio 4.6, PoserPro 2012, Blender v2.74

System: Pentium QuadCore i7, under Win 8, GeForce GTX 780 / 2GB GPU.