@ RHaseltine:

As I mentioned in this post I do not have any hard evidence that the latest Carrara 8.5.1.19 was done by an inexperienced intern, it's only a 'hunch'. Carrara 8.5.1.19 just 'smells and feels' that way.

I could enumerate all my professional background over the past 20 years that, imo, qualifies me to express an opinion about the 'Smell and Feel' of a piece of software and about the kind of programmer(s) who designed it, but let's leave it at that.

FYI in the latest Carrara 8.5.1.19 under the Browser --> Content tab, the 'auto-detect runtimes' doesn't work anymore. You must add your runtimes manually. Under the same tab when you double-click on a content to load it, it displays a dialog asking you to 'Please locate the default repository (folder Runtime)'. And it does this each and every time you double-click on a content to load it. Wow, great, wonderful, you can't even load a content anymore without telling each time the location of the default repository.

That important functions that worked flawlessly for ages suddenly get screwed-up big time, is a proof that Carrara 8.5.1.19 has been 'released' with minimal testing. It's a proof that the intern(s) who worked on Carrara had absolutely no idea of what they were doing. Yeah, let's ship it out and when a user reports a bug the answer will be 'Gee, how could that have happened?'

I maintain here that Daz delivers us a pudding that cannot be eaten and it will get worse and worse with every new serving.

I agree that 'Carrara does many things very well', but all the things that it does very well will sooner or later stop working (as in the examples above) because the cook is not up to the task.