newbie question number 2. I build up a scene with meshes, materials (colormaterials only) and lights get the whole thing working, export as .awd version 2 and when I reopen the .awd file all the lights are gone and I have to do it all again. What is the trick to saving lights in a scene? I have “whole scenery” checked and tried with “collapse” and “embed dependancies” with no luck so far.

An own Prefab project format is in the making… but not ready yet.

In meanwhile, you can save the lights as xml,
menu export/prefabfiles/scene lights xml
load them back using menu/file/loads xml lights

It will not reapply to the materials, but that should save you some time.