Detecting collision/intersection of a line/cylinder through a 3D object

I'm working on a special case collision detection where I have a cylinder that intersects some object in a scene. The cylinder can be considered a simple line, or actually two points that make up each end of the cyl. I've been trying to simply use picking by rendering from the cylinder's point of view (looking from one end toward the other) and testing depth, but I'm a little frustrated right now and am wondering if there is a better (simpler) way.

Any ideas would be helpful in stimulating my stagnant brain.

Cheers!

Use AABBs or sphere's for a trivial rejection test. If that passes then do a per-triangle intersection test.

I'm very new to any type of collision detection. How is the per-triangle intersection test accomplished?