I learned metaballs by playing with Metasequoia, which allows for all the basic primitives to be used in positive or negative metaball shapes. Meta calls it "blob" tool. So when B5 came out, it was a real basic tool to only have spheres. I guess best advice is to keep playing. Do a search here in the forum because I know there were some posts about 'how to' with the metaball back when B5 was released. Maybe we do need a tut or two. If no one finds one, I'll put that on my TTD list (which is a bit long at the moment).