Wow ! That's a good deal of expert opinions ! Thanks folks. After reading this, it appears that LightWave and Maya are out of the question for financial reasons, just as Rhino. I'll have a try at Wings 3D and Cinema 4D. What I would like is something to make some kind of scultpure : you take a sphere, shape it into a helmet, then carve a cylinder in it to make a plug socket, etc... I could do it in Bryce, with booleans, but it would not export as an obj. I also just read good review of Blender, a free 3D, open source, modeller. Has anyone got any experience with it ? Thanks for your help everyone.