FWIW, Acadia, I consider myself a fairly skilled programmer and the material room still baffles me at times.  Thankfully, bagginsbill's matmatic freebie is starting to help by letting me "see the code" of what he does.   But I've had those same "How'd he know to do that?" moments.   The castleposer link he pointed you at is good indeed.  I learned a lot from there.