They're individual strands. I think I get about 500 strands for the same number of polys as that triple-thread triple-wrapped rope just under your ellipse! The place to save polys was rather at the beginning, before I realized I needed to! At 16MB (or so) it renders fine with a figure, three lights mapped at 2000, textures and all, on my 500MHz Athlon with 196MB (Full tracking not reccomended). That said, the size problem is rather one for distribution than creation.