[docdavies]

Thanks Folks,

A couple of replys...

1. I'll check out InventorCAM.
2. I tried Inkscape....it did not seem straight forward, but I'll have at it again.
3. We use MasterCAM X5 (soon to be X6) and it works pretty well, but obviously it's commercial...If Autodesk did something...it might be made available to students like the rest of their software.
4. We are trying to talk school admin into getting MasterCAM ART..but they're dragging their heels...and the same school teacher said..."I talked to folks here and there are lots of ways to do that conversion"...."you need to look harder before we spend money"...
5. I'll also look into the Solidworks stuff...but I've got a significant investment of "head pounding against the wall" in Inventor....don't want to lose that / start over with new package.....

As always, thanks folks for the timely responses....
Doc