Lady,
I find the sexist tirade that EtchASketch directed at you outrageous and I'm sorry that you had to encounter this repulsive behavior.:(

However, rodzilla is right; it's very frustrating when people ask the simplest questions that could easily be answered by reading the manual and many times it's a hint that the person in question does not have a legal copy. A similar thing happened in the trueSpace forum not too long ago: somebody kept asking very simple questions. We helped him, but kept telling him to read the manual, too. Finally he confessed that he did not have the manual because he had an illegal copy. Of course, he was banned.

Like you, Poppi, I looked at the forums when I was trying to decide which 3d application to get. I found the trueSpace forum very helpful and nice, and partly because of that, I decided to get trueSpace. I've never regretted the decision.