Hey Donnie, I was a Ray Dream user and moved to Carrara when Metacreations put it up for sale and it's future seemed uncertain. I figured I needed to switch and tried out Strata for a few months. Ease of use, great textures included, great rendering, weak modeler. I then switched over to Lightwave for about a year and although its power in all aspects is undeniable, I never warmed to the interface. For a person who does still pictures, Lightwave seems overly complex. Carrara 3's improvements in its vertex modeler and renderer pulled me back. I haven't opened Lightwave in a few months now but I am grateful that it gave me insight into polygonal modeling, something which has carried over to Carrara's vertex modeler.