It has been my experience a number of times that after the one trick ponies (engineers on SolidWorks) got done cobbing out a poorly designed exterior using SolidWorks I was able to finish the job for them using Rhino in a fraction of the time they had spent struggling in Solidworks. I feel your statement is somewhat misleading as if the two other packages are good for quick sketchy stuff but not quality enough to do the 'real work'.

When you get done with the conceptual you still end up doing the finish work in something besides SolidWorks. Having worked as a designer I will say that there is much that I think SolidWorks lacks in freeform surface creation. So on either way you go $4k is a cheap investment, it's just like buying a machine for the shop, its becomes one of the most important tools in your everyday work life. Rhino/SpaceClaim with all the same features for engineering are about the same price $4k, and in the machine shop you need translators, because people want to send you their native files, not a translated one. they want to get size,shape and form quickly and aren't as concerned about how it will go together up front. Now I'm not saying Rhino and SpaceClaim are bad, they are very good for certan fields, like ID(Indusrtrial Design) where everything is freeform or very conceptual and dont have alot of hard numbers to hit off the bat, I know this because I worked for 3 ID firms, IDEO, FrogDesign and Designology as a modelmaker. As shopvac stated why manage 2 sets of files for 2 or 3 different packages, when you can do the same in one? The reason i had asked what it cost for both Rhino and SpaceClaim is so everyone knows apples to apples.

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