I would be able to do this much easier in Radiant, Cartography shop, etc. I want to at least understand how an artist uses MAX to create a level, especially one that might be compiled to a BSP. I've tried every method I could think of, they are all LAME. one: use lines, and draw out your dungeon with a rough shape. Then extrude it. It sorta works. Then flip the normals. two: uses boxes. Attach them. In the name of god, try to figure out how to delete the duplicate faces and weld the vertices (it really feels totally NOOB when I try this, I don't know how to get the faces without moving the camera, and I do not know what to put into the Weld selected for distance without totally deforming my mesh). three: uses boxes, meshes. USe booleans to union, subtract, and cut. This works, but STL check fails miserably. I have no idea how you fix this either. I have scoured the internet looking for ANY information on how you do this in MAX and found practically nothing to help. I'm not an artist, but I feel I should at least have a solid understanding of the Artists tools and skills so I can relate to them better with their work.

Could you please elaborate on the "no concaves" rule? Why no concaves?

convex cells is required by the algorithms in most engines. It is for portals (Quake is really a portal engine, but it solves the portals in the map compiler by cutting the portals down between every sector. Mappers in quake never have to manually place portals).

I think booleans work very well but you have to pay attention to the details between objects. Different densities will result in nasty splits and weird faces.

Oh, so in order to impliment portals on a map you must pre-divide the map into arbitrary partitions called "brushes" which must conform to certain geometric constraints.