Question a la idiot...

Right, this is probably a stupid question but I can't find any details about it. I am new by a few days to the amazing world of SL, and I am finding it all great apart from the building. I was wondering if there is any way to import models from a program such as 3DS Max or Maya, as I find the built in tool hard to use and limiting. For example, as far as I am aware, there is no way to subtract one object from another, which at many times seems to be the easiest course to take to get the desired results.

Can anyone help?

Edit: typo of death...

Welcome to SL. The simple answer is, no, or at least not in the near future. There are various reasons, of which many have discussed at length within other threads in the forum. You can do a simple search for them. One of the reasons being that the built in tools were made to minimize the amount of data needed to transfer to users. As such, everything here is made from parametric objects instead of meshes which contain data for every vertex in an object.

My suggestion is, try and play around a little with the tools. It may be limiting, but it isn't that bad for something recreational. Just think of it as though you're playing a 'game'. And if you get lost, there is always someone around to help. Have fun.

Yeah, I guess. I was just hoping that there might be a plugin for one of the major 3D programs that allowed it to build in a way that would easily translate to SL, with low prims and such, to cut down on server load.

If you do a search in the forum, there was one guy who wrote a program to translate 3Dmax (IIRC) objects into Second Life. It's not something you'd actually want to use though, because it used far too many prims (which are generally your limiting factor when building in SL) for the imported objects.