Heya:
Part 1 of the Strat tutorial is free - that will give you a good feel for what the rest of it is all about.
http://www.simplylightwave.com/movie...mhtml?tut_id=6
You might also want to check out my own thread (bit of shameless self promotion here) which is an ongoing part-by-part breakdown of the whole tutorial:
http://forum.simplylightwave.com/sho...&threadid=4934
Just remember that the tutorial was written a while back so some of the tools have been updated as well as the interface slightly - I would say that it is still relevant to Lightwave 9 however despite this - its more about how to use the tools than telling you what the tools are.