In article . com,
"Geoff" wrote:

Since I'd rather spend $3000+ on a Laguna band saw than on AutoCAD,
does anyone have a recommendation on design software other than AutoCAD
2005?


I am AutoCAD trained and find it bulky, overpriced and far from
intuitive. Who needs 6 ways to draw a line?
3D modelling is cumbersome and to get any rendering
performance/shaders/textures/ray tracing you have to buy this and buy
that, video cards yadda yadda.
To this day, I have NO idea where the hell the reputation came from.

I use Vectorworks. (aka MiniCAD...Mini as in "smaller than a MainFrame")
Available for PC or Mac, it exports/imports in all the important file
formats like .dwg, .dxf.
Full blown 3D, NURBS, the works.

http://www.nemetschek.net/