I've been away for a few days resting my poor old brain, and just saw Midnightcarnival's question.

"sorry to high jack the thread" - not at all, the question's rather appropriate. And you seem to be getting some helpful answers - QED, posted in the right place!

"...having to get into making illustrations to demonstrate the problem..."*  - if you can explain a problem in words that's all you need, and there's plenty of really helpful people on these boards. (I post pictures because my words often puzzle people, myself included! ;o)

"...with freeware [clay-style] programs ... are primitive-based modeling programs still practical? ... what advantages are there in toughing it out with the more complicated to use programs?" - my advice (beginner to beginner) is to try to get to grips with the basics of as many different (free!) programs as you can, then they can all go in your toolkit. You'll inevitably end up preferring one or other, because they have the best fit to the way you think and work.

"I'm just doing this stuff for fun and learning"  - that's the acid test, when it stops being fun you know you're doing something wrong!

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The 3Dcheapskate* occasionally posts sensible stuff. Usually by accident.
And it usually uses Poser 11, with units set to inches. Except when it's using Poser 6 or PP2014, or when its units are set to PNU.

*also available in ShareCG, DAZ, and HiveWire3D flavours (the DeviantArt and CGBytes flavour have been discontinued).