POV-Ray is short for the Persistence of Vision Raytracer, a tool for producing high-quality computer graphics. It renders deceptively simple scene files into astonishing graphics. POV-Ray is not a modeller. It will not let you design scenes graphically on-screen. There are several shareware and freeware programs available for this purpose. To write or modify POV-Ray scenes you just edit the actual text file containing the commands.
You can find more information about POV-Ray on the CompuServe Information Service in the GO POVRAY forum or at http://www.povray.org or ftp.povray.org. The USENET group comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing is a great source of information on POV-Ray and related topics.

#include "colors.inc"
#include "textures.inc"

camera { location <0, 0, -13> look_at <0, 0, 0> }

#declare BigZylinder = cylinder { <0.0, -15, 0.0>, <0.0, 15, 0.0>, 1.0 }

#declare SmallZylinder = cylinder { <0.0, -15, 0.0>, <0.0, 15, 0.0>, 1.0
scale <0.02, 1, 0.1> translate <-1, 0, 0> }

#declare Column = difference {
object { BigZylinder }
#declare Count=16
#declare i=0
#while (i < Count)
object { SmallZylinder rotate <0, (360 / Count) * i, 0> }
#declare i = i + 1
#end
texture { Brass_Texture }
scale <0.5, 0.5, 0.5>
}

#declare BigRuler = object { Column rotate <0, 0, 90> scale <2, 0.18, 1> }

object { BigRuler rotate <334, 0, 0> translate <0, 6, 0> }
object { Column translate <-8.4, 0, 0> finish { phong 1 phong_size 30 } }

light_source { <145, 100, -128> color rgb <1, 1, 1> }
light_source { <11, -50, -12> color rgb <1, 1, 1> }
light_source { <45, 150, -120> color rgb <1, 1, 1> }
light_source { <45, -55, -128> color rgb <1, 0.6, 0.6> } // red

background { color rgb <1, 0.95, 0.7> }

This shows the result.
If you use Netscape you will see why I could not use the ruler shown there: I have found no way to place a picture at position 0 (please tell me if you know a way to do this).
If you use the MS-Explorer - this looks good, does it ?