Carrara was a program that nearly died on the table. After all the struggles Ray Dream went through it finally got fully stable and properly usable at 5.5 Then Meta decided to make Carrara 1 out of it. Which was so buggy it almost killed the entire line there. Eovia took over and fixed half the bugs for their Carrara Studio 1. By C3 it is nicely stable and quite functional. I like the vertex modeller myself, but the splines are great for knocking out a quick model. It is also weaning this long-time Bryce user away from his favorite render engine. Anyhow....try the demo, see how it runs, see how the workflow works for you. There are other options within the same range. And you really shouldn't stop looking at options until you have tried Wings3D (a free modelling ap).