first thanks for the info so far!  Downloaded Silo and I'm about to open it up and look around.

As far as lists of free programs, I have seen a plethora of links to this and that, but my problem is that details are rarely specific.  Now Im sitting with Vue and Carrara and the programs essentially do the same things in the way of things I want.  I don't want to do anymore of that.

I want to in the end just have a good arsenol of things to work with - and personal recommendations or descriptions of what a program does in response to a specific request for information is going to save me $$ I hope = D

I am:  aka Velocity3d