Either you have to start with dense cylinders so you don't have to worry about topology and connecting edges or you would have to pay attention to cylinders sides to avoid triangles (which I think isn't a big issue in this case).
step by step, oooh baby! always start with a simple shape, as simple as you can. Less vertices to work with, less hassle. reworked the simple "squares" to be more round and fit the concept better added edge between those shapes, so i can seperate them and work with only that part. here you can see that i am only working…
haven't used max for years but afaik there's a modifier named 'spherify' that makes things round. When modeling stuff like screw heads, most of times I start with a flattened quadball. Mostly it's a pretty good starting base for stuff like that, there was a tutorial about making a round screw head out of a quadball by a…