Made a few tests last night with surface replicator.

Used non-Carrara plants (objects, some complex), it worked perfectly.  Lots of plants (6000 +) caused some delay while populating the grid, but rendered quickly.

I then tried replicating a building and again, it worked just as expected, without undue overhead.

I find the surface replicator amazing.

One other thing - I haven't played with them, but splats normally follow the camera?  I didn't think you had to use the "look at" modifier.  Some more experimenting is called for.

Klebnor

Lotus 123 ~ S-Render ~ OS/2 WARP ~ IBM 8088 / 4.77 Mhz ~ Hercules Ultima graphics, Hitachi 10 MB HDD, 64K RAM, 12 in diagonal CRT Monitor (16 colors / 60 Hz refresh rate), 240 Watt PS, Dual 1.44 MB Floppies, 2 button mouse input device.  Beige horizontal case.  I don't display my unit.