how common? - you'll only do it once before committing suicide or changing professions.

it would be extremely difficult to draw CDs on photoshop... the program just wasn't meant to do such things as it is raster based. I suppose you may have better luck with illustrator being a vector based program but you might as well be drawing it by hand and scanning it in. You do have the option of importing line drawings from programs such as ACAD and using them as part of a layout designed on Illustrator or Photoshop but to have truly precise scaled drawings I think you will have better luck elsewhere.

First of all if you are going to waste your time in this make sure yu do it with illustrator. And the reason is simple, Illustrator like CAD is a vector based program which means that it will not pixelate your drawiings. The other deal is that you can draw it at full scale and then do the math and scale using the scale tool -down to the size you want/need. But if you are going to go thru all this, make sure you understand the following: you could, yes you could drive on the freeway on reverse and still go the right way; but why?

you could do it, but it would be so much more difficult.

Thanks guys.

tzenyujuei, I never knew you could do that with ACAD, I think importing line work from CAD to illustrator is probably the best option for the sort of stuff i want to do. Thanks.

i think there are other ways but the easiest would be to "print" the ACAD drawings as a jpeg or some other format and import it into illustrator or indesign (it should retain all the line weights and color settings). My friends like changing them into pdfs because they say it retains more information but im not sure how much validity that has. i think there are some other methods so if anyone out there knows better please correct me. anyways, good luck with that.

i usually print to file as an EPS from ACAD.

i taught myself to use ACAD so there might be a better way to do this, but the way i have been doing this is to first make a new printer with the printer wizard and set it to export to file during setup. i have made 2 of these, one in color and one b+w. when i want a digital version i select the digital printer and print. very fast, and consistent.

From eps i can link with InDesign or open in Photoshop or Illustrator for modifcation. Line weights and so on are preserved though I find illustrator plays havoc with layers.

i think i read here somewhere that it is possible to export a series of drawings to pdf from ACAD as well...

First of all... a jpeg is raster ...you get nothing out of exporting to a jpeg except crap...
illustrator can open dxf/dwg files...you might need to down save them but it works...I recommend printing to a eps if you are going to go that route. the problem with pdfs is that you end up with lots of crap in the file that can cause printing problems down the road....by problems I mean that your plotter will try to process all the nested information as you stack pdfs within each other, and since we all know that you should print from a pdf format (prob not based on what is written above) this is problematic...
you can export to a eps, but if you do you give up the ability to create a true scaled drawing...
when you open a dwg in illustrator it usually will ask you to scale it as well and it will support you layers often the best option, but sometimes I dont want all the layers so I take the eps route...

If you want to draft in illustrator, something that I do not recomend except in very limited cases there is a cad plugin for illustrator that is if nothing else just fun to have...
I also recomend learning what different software does and why...you should educate yourself in the difference between vector and raster...and then the software that brings the two together...for publishing...Indesign most often....software is very powerful if you can harness it, or painful and horrid if you dont...

CADTools by Hot Door is the CAD plug-in for Illustrator