If you have $1,000 or more to spend, there are plenty of good AEC-specific (Architecture-Engineering-Construction) computer-aided design (CAD) programs. But what if all you want to do is bang out some quick presentation drawings after work to close more sales or to show to your existing clients and subs? Are any of those “home design” programs useful for professionals? Or can any of the programs available for free online do the job? The answer is yes, if you’re willing to work around the limitations of low-cost CAD by combining different 2D and 3D products and willing to use an image-editing program to polish up the final work (see “One-Stop Imaging,” page 54). There’s one catch — this crop
