I already gave that prize to Amapi 6! I've been building my present project with Hexagon but for my next I'm now determined to get back down to Shade. I'm building machines and am starting to see the big advantages of splines over Hexagon's easy to use poly tools. One of the biggest advantages is efficiency with regards to the meshes it builds: when you convert to polys, it puts the detail only where the curves you've made need it and all in tidy quads, no need to decimate, leaving you with nasty looking tris. Saying that, I'm still very new to all this and I'm sure that Hexagon lets you build tidy meshes too - but with Shade, that seems built into the whole workflow. I'm very tempted to go with version 8 and work through the interface problems. Interface aside, another thing that I feel Shade has going for it is the workspace. I remember doing TD at school and this feels the closest thing I've found to a virtual drawing board! I can't get a huge monitor, nor have I space for two, so this matters to me. I know that you can open up the workspace in Hexagon but it still doesn't feel as good - perhaps because it uses palets that open onto the workspace rather than the floaters you show and hide and put where you want. The more I get into this side of things, the more I see how individual it is. Not just 'the right tools for the right job' but 'the right tools for me'.