I have used Ray dream designer (pre-Carrara) and Carrara from version 1 to version5 .I think Carrara is a very good all around 3d soft for hobbyist like me. Many tools ,excellent rendering But i always find it was slow in modelling and and having  bad selection tools (better now than ever but still need to amelioration) ,especially  in vertex  modelling

Since i have used Silo 1,4 and now 2  and Rhino version 4  i know , by comparaison, that these have  much better  modelling tools than Carrara  but still use Carrara 5 or others for shading and renderingt