Thank you for your reply.
Glad to hear Carrara Pro 8 can work well for my SL meshes, and as you say, the built-in Collada exporter would be a serious plus (if only it worked more efficiently). With 8.5 currently in Beta, I'll have to see if they've managed to fix that double-up problem (or at least made it optional, if it's a 'feature'). If not, I guess I'll have to install Blender again (which I personally loathe for it's terrible interface), but as you say, simply using it as a file format convertor should minimise the hassles.
As for Hexagon, I'd have used it a lot more for sculptie work if not for the crashes I had in the past, otherwise I'm sure I'd be as dedicated to it as you are.
It would have been nice to just use Carrara Pro 8 for both, but failing that, Carrara and Hexagon would be a good pairing fo my SL work, I'm sure. As for tutorials, for lack of any (that we know about), perhaps I'll end up recording some.
Anyway, thank you again for your reply. Kudos to you.
<3