I have been using AutoCAD® since version 2.1 in 1984 and in my opinion I find AutoCAD® to be the easiest and most logical CAD software for producing engineering design drawings.
      AutoCAD® can be customised to suit individual needs and doing this greatly increases its speed and efficiency. This is done by having various menus and lisp routines based around discipline requirements. I use either digitiser tablets and/or dialog boxes to initiate particular routines.
      At startup you define a scale factor and sheet size. These variables are remembered for the life of the drawing. They are used for drawing aids such as grid, snap, limits etc and for setting scale  factors for text, block inserts and plotting.
      The Base tablet and Common commands toolbar are for speeding up normal AutoCAD® operations such as text creation/editing and line creation/modifying. Also included are miscellaneous routines for producing clouds, brackets and a counter.
      The discipline tablets and toolbars are for selecting symbols and inserting them where required. Some attribute values are answered automatically and lines broken around the symbol. The particular disciplines catered for are electrical, electronic, instrumentation, piping and process.
      For an in-depth review go to the Manual section of the website and you can see the discipline tablets, toolbars, dialog boxes, symbols and examples.

Peter Brown