Arcady, I experienced several time a similar problem (see my thread 'Texture Bug in Carrara?' from March 15, 2000). The slowdown on my system (P III 500, 256 MB, Windows 2000) was not so heavy as you described it. The reaction time was about 3 - 10 seconds, depending from facet count of the object. I tried to get help here, at ONElist mailing list and Metacreations support, without success. Since then I found a solution that works for me. I tested around with a mesh with 20,000 facets and a texture map 1024 x 1024 pixels. After setting the map in the shader and returning to assemble room, Carrara slowed down. After 8 minutes the object suddenly was shown without texture and Carrara returned to its old speed. I switched the preview from 'Textured' to 'Gouraud', closed the scene and imported the object again. This time, after adding the map, there was no slowdown. I tried several objects, that made problems before, with the gouraud setting. Success every time. It seems Carrara has a problem with textures on big meshes in the preview. Without textured preview you can ship around this bug. wolfdd