I'd love to offer advice, Ron, but I have very little experience with Amapi. I do know that Renderosity has a forum dedicated to the software.

Here are links to various modeling tools that can be had on-the-cheap:

Amapi v4.15 (freeware)
Anim8or (freeware)
MilkShape 3D (trialware, $20)
trueSpace 1.0 (freeware)

Each program has its own strengths and disadvantages, and the user interfaces can vary wildly. So look around and find something you'll be comfortable with.

geralday made use of anim8or in his Free Stuff creations.

I use MilkShape heavily myself.

trueSpace 1 is probably the oldest of the freebies; it was designed for Windows 3.1, and may not work well with some modern systems. Also, it cannot directly export to Wavefront .obj format.