David,
As an architect I've used AutoCad for many years beginning with R10 (Release 10
- 1988'ish.) and Cad has become one of my most useful tools in model engineering
work. I now practice privately doing projects which don't require a great deal
of Cad sophistication and I found that of all the Autocad versions I'd used
Autocad LT97 (Autocad Lite) was the most useful and easy to use. It is now
obsolete and can be picked up (on eBay for instance) for a pittance although it
now rarely appears there. All Autocad programs are complex and require a
learning curve but once mastered become a piece of cake. Also, if you find a
used Autocad program be certain the seller will guarrantee loading because some
releases of Autocad over-wrote the install disk upon first installation and
required that you request a code from Autocad to re-installed the program.

For a while there was also a series of Cad programs called Generic Cad which
were produced by former AutoCad programmers and was a simplified (2-D) but still
powerful version of Autocad R12 or R13, which were very good versions. They no
longer exist because, what else?, AutoCad bought them out!

Cheers,
Harry Wade
Nashville USA

-----Original Message-----
>From: david_steam <no_reply@...>
>Subject: [Half inch live steam forum] CAD
>Who uses CAD, and what is a good program to learn about the subject.