How do I make a 3D-Object of this Xara-Shape?

[Wolfgang]

Hi everybody,

after an hour of trying, I totally failed in what I thought to be very easy ...

I am trying to do a 3D-rendering of the enclosed shape in Bryce 6 (it will get a texture too in the end)

First I tried it by creating a symetrical lattice in Bryce using this a a height map.
And while it principally worked, the quality is very poor and it also slows Bryce down quite a bit.

So I thought, I "quickly" extrude the shape to a coin-like 3D-Object and use this in Bryce.
Only that I could not manage to do it ... ;-(

I tried importing it into Sketchup to extrude it, but it did not work at all.
I also can't import it into Bryce and extrude it there.

Does anybody know of an easy way ... an Online-Service or a Freeware program perhaps ... to convert such simple shapes (or maybe even text) into 3D-Objects by simply extruding them along the y-axis and saving them in a common format like .obj or .3ds ??

I am totally inexperienced in the 3D-world, I really can do only simple things and I don't have any other programs than Bryce and Sketchup. Well, I have Blender installed, but no idea how it works ...

My first choice would be a helpful hint how/where to do it.
If that's not possible with what I have, maybe somebody could fix me a .obj of it and post it ??

Thanks a lot and Happy New Year !!!

Wolfgang