I am trying to create a 3d object that is essentialy like an undulating slab (sort of like a furling ribbon or arcing wing). I've got a contour (footprint) sketched on a one foot grid (x,y) and elevation info that tells me a numerical height (z) of the contour at each point where the contour/footprint intersects a grid line. Elevations on one side of the object's contour are often different from the elevation on the other side (ie- the surface rarely stays parallel to the working plane but instead furls up and down causing twists of various sorts).
I have tried making a 2d polygon of the contour in such a way that each vertex is located at a grid intersection, then converting that to a nurbs curve, then cycling through all vertices of that nurbs curve and typing in the correct z height . But when I try to make a solid object from the nurbs curve (so I can display it as a shell or thin slab) I can't get anywhere. I've tried coverting it to a nurbs surface and then using the shell tool but it will not compute. I can't figure how a mesh might work in this situation. Should I try to loft between two curves. There must be some way to do this but I'm not figuring it out. I have zyx cooridinates for each point where the contour meets the grid but I'm not sure how to use bezier curves because then the vertex of the polygon is the curve control handle not a point along the contour.