scale object will sort out the huge object, just rescale it to something like the size you want, it works in percent, so 50 is 1/2 size (50% of full size) you can use fractions to get the exact size you want (eg 22.234), for your other problem you want
set camera range, and make the near value very small so that anything near to the camera like your matrix does not get clipped, as for the sand textured matrix, surely you can load a sand image and use
prepare matrix texture and
set matrix tile, just copy the code from the help file example, hope thats some help.
Mentor.
PC1: P4 hyperthreading 3ghz, 1gig mem, 2x160gig hd`s, Nvidia FX5900 gfx, 6 way surround sound, PC2: AMD 1.2ghz, 512mb ram, FX5200 ultra gfx, stereo 16 bit soundblaster, ups.