Strata 3Dpro 3.7 RME is Strata's most feature rich 3D application. In addition to the full suite of 3D modeling, animation, and F/X's tools, this version boasts Web3D capabilities, allowing web designers to export animations to Macromedia Flash format with the integrated Swift 3D power module, RAViX II™ SWF.

Also new with version 3.7 (both plus and pro versions) are the animation effects of Explode and Shatter.

The interface is fairly standard, with floating tool palettes and menus. All menu items can be assigned keystroke shortcuts to suit your preferences. You are presented initially with a single isometric view window. There are a limitless number of ways to customize this window to suit your working style. Using a drop down menu attached to this window you can either split the view, or spawn a new view window. Each window, or split view can then be viewed from the Front, Back, Left, Right, Top, Bottom or Isometric. In addition, once a camera has been added to the scene, a special Camera view window can be opened, which has its own set of tools to allow for simple manipulation of the camera's view. Each view window can also be selected for the display render type choices of GL Point Cloud, GL OutLine, GL Wireframe, GL Flat, GL Hidden Line, or GL Shaded. GL stands for OpenGL, enabling very fast displays if working with an OpenGL accelerated video card

Strata has a few different object types to use for modeling 3D objects - Bezier, also referred to as surface patches, Polygonal, Primitives, and MetaBall. Lathing, or extruding 2D- Bezier curves drawn with the Bezier Pen tool generally forms Bezier objects, or other 2D objects such as the Rectangle, Oval, or Polygon tools, or from the Text Tool.

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The Extrude tool is quite flexible, allowing you to pull out a 3D shape from a 2D primitive. With the Object Properties palette you are able to define the profile shape of the extruded portion by clicking through the profile curves, and interactively modifiying the profile curve.

The Extensions Palette reveals more modeling tools under the Tools, and Commands tabs. Tools include the extrusion of a 2D shape along a path, bones, skins, deformation meshes, a complete set of Boolean operators, and mirroring. Jiggle is kinda cool. It allows you to modify the deformation lattice of a 3D model, and when animated, the model jiggles like jello back into its original shape.

The Extension Commands include a couple of tools for working with Bezier curves - Align Handles, Make First Point, Drop a Curve, Hull, UnHull, and Thickness. Hull is a useful modeling tool, allowing you to create a surface from 4 Bezier curves. The Fillet command allows you to round the edges of a polygonal object. Rounding out the extension toolset are the Metaball tools, which allow modeling by combining elliptical shapes into smooth shapes which appear to melt together.

I found modeling in Strata to be quite easy to learn. This is due in part to the relatively light set of modeling tools. The modeling toolset is sufficient for most modeling tasks. Moving individual vertices on Polygonal models, and reshaping Bezier objects with adjustable control handles gives you low level capability to model geometrically complex objects, as well as organic shapes.