Hello Kelly, There may be several things going on here. I haven't experienced any of these. First, the rendering issue. You probably have already done some of these but here is the check list anyway: 1)make sure you are using Carrara 4.1.1 2)Make sure your video drivers are updated. 3)change the GUI from Eovia software to OpenGL or vice versa. 4)Contact Carrara Technical support - I know they'd be very, very interested in finding a solution. Secondly, the pipes: Just taking a guess here but if you have an object, duplicate it, move it and scale it and then duplicate the duplicated object, the new object will "inherit" the transformation properites of the first object. For example, if the first object was moved a distance of 5 and scaled to 80% of the original size, the next duplicate will be distance 10 and 60% from the source object. Simply clicking on another object in your scene prior to duplicating your object or undoing the duplication and then redoing duplication will fix this. Post back your results! Mark