You know, after trying and trying again...and again...and again...lofting curves, adding planar caps and trying to connect everything into one shape (one of the mods at highend3d suggested I need to break the loft into 4 pieces vertically each having the same number of isoparms, then select the for edges and create a boundary surface...beyond me at this point)....I'm beginning to wonder why this or even the various methods for poly modeling, have to be like pulling teeth for something that seems like it should be a given option. It's like I just want to be able to use the curve tools or beziers to create a poly shape (like the create poly tool) and be able to extrude it with caps and attach it all into one shape, yet it takes 50 steps to do one little thing.

Newbie frustrations? Yeah you bet!