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Rick,
I presume you are trying to create something like dinner plates. I took a few minutes and created an example (two, actually). The first image is of the profile I created in Carrara's spline modeler for the plate. The next two images are renderings of two plates (front and back), the gold plate being straight from the spline editor, the blue plate being that same plate after that plate was converted to the vertex editor and then smoothed/subdivided (2 levels, I believe). (Note: The plates really are round. It's just the camera perspective and the shadows that make them appear otherwise, other than the issue noted below with one of them.)
The profile really just defines the outer edge of the plate (Geometry set to translation, and symmetrical). The circular cross-section used creates the flat closed ends/faces. If I had wanted more curvature in the plate faces, I would have made the cross-section circle smaller (possibly even very small), and the profiles would then have to be vertically extended to make up the difference. The path of the object was left untouched (shortening and modifying the profile path shortened the object path, but left it straight).
The reason for two plates in the pictures had to do with the way the spline-based plate came out with angular edges (not sure why). I upped the surface fidelity, but it didn't seem to make much of a difference, so I converted the plate to the vertex modeler and smoothed/subdivided it, with better results (although it smoothed the base edge more than I would have wanted it).
In any case, I hope this provides a little better picture of how the spline modeler works, and helps you with your plates. As for myself, I've pretty much moved over to doing most of my modeling in Hexagon, so I really don't use Carrara's spline modeler much nowadays.
hth
rj
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