Please Help Me With Character Modeling Tutorial

I am attempting to do the Real Time Character Modeling Tutorial by Antony Ward in maya. However, as a new user, I have stumbled into several problems. First, in order to construct the torso, I am using a nurbs cylinder. But I need to split the cylinder in two so I can model one side of the torso and then just mirror it on the other side. How do you do this? Second once I have completed sculpting cylinders for the arm, leg, and torso, how do I combine them into one? Also, how do I replicate the one side of the body that I have created to form a whole body?

Hopefully these questions have an easy fix. I appreciate those who spent the time to respond. Thanks a lot.

The "split" a nurbs surface you select an isoparm or create one where you want to devidie it an dthen select the Detach Surfaces command from the Edit Nurbs menu.

I'm not familiar with this tutorial but I assume the finished model with probably be a polygon mesh. You cannot actually create a humanoid character that is a single nurbs surface.

There is a mirror surface command ..otherwise you simply invert the scale on the copy of a mesh and then use combine and merge edges to make it one single mesh