playing with new software

[utahcutter]

Due to being a little slow at work, I've been sentenced to learning some new software. Don't know how useful this will be to you contractors, but for anybody who employs drafters and could use a good program for rendering 3-d models this is the best one I've dealt with. It's Accurender 3.1. It was built specifically for rendering solid models drawn in AutoCAD, it even boots up from your AutoCAD command prompt. Can put out some pretty realistic images if tinkered with long enough, and is fairly easy to use. The worst part is doing the model in AutoCAD, which I prefer to some program that's always trying to guess what you want, rather than doing what you do want. I think it runs around $500 to purchase. Very impressed with it myself.

[Rich]

Yep.. I've been using Accurender for about 5 or so years now. Facade is also a pretty good program for making it faster to create the models - comes with Accurender (or did when I bought it anyway).
I've also gotten into using Sketchup. For as simple as it is to use it is a pretty powerful program. Can quickly create the simplest community layouts to the most complex residential projects. Import , export to autocad.