FaxCap,

Do you have gMax? 3d Max is its BIG brother. As far a basic modeling goes, you can do pretty much the same things in either program and when working in the programs they look and feel the same. The major differences are 3dMax has a rendering engine so you can export a scene to a flat image or make a little movie if the scene is animated. With gMax you must export to the various games and then the game becomes the rendering device. There are also other things that 3dMax can do but you have to think of it like a car, You can buy a Toyota that is very basic, no air conditioning,  no power steering, stick shift and so on, or you can buy the "Deluxe" model with all the creature comforts and bells and whistles. But in the end, you still have a Toyota.

Now, as far as actual modeling goes, you don't draw in a 2d window and LET the program do the work for you. You really are working in virtual 3d space, working with basic objects like boxes, cylinders, spheres and cones. For the most part, these objects are broken down into sub-objects of points (a coordinate in 3d space), edges (the lines that connect the points) and polygons (the area defined by 3 edges). You control where the points are to form the shapes you make. While you do have windows with preset views, top, left, front and so on, you are still working in 3d and have a perspective or user view also.

Lou

I tihnk what you mean are NURBS. I actually don't know if gmax has the capability to create those, but in short  it means you draw outlines for the surface you want, and make with a NURBS command (like 1 or 2 rail sweep, loft or network) a 3D surface. Max is not really good at it, since it's a polygon modeller, like most 3D software is. MAYA is better, but Rhino is king in that respect. That's cause Rhino is specialized on NURBS modelling and therefore has very limited polygonmodellling tools. Don't confuse the term polygon modelling with polygons, that's something different...