RE: CAD shoot out
Well for years I have used Corel Draw to do all my cad work. yea its not as powerful as say acad but i have designed 3rd scale aircraft on it as it is not limited on any size but your imagination. you could draw a full scale 747 on it if you didnt mind all the zoom in and zoom out. the other bonus is when i want to import a set of plans to trace and enlarge the one thing corel has over any other cad program i have found is that when you resize your tiff drawing the lines dont get really fat and thick they stay the same size whick is like .5mm wide the width of a mechanical pencil thus it makes it really easy to trace plans for enlargement besides designing your own.
Joe