From the above list, we use Sketchup and Dropbox daily.

Graphic Converter is a great low-cost alternative to Photoshop, but is Mac only.  

Some solo practitioners in my area use Draftsight instead of AutoCad and are really happy with it.

Sketchup is the only program that I'd consider better than the "standards" you listed above, and at this point I'd consider that among the ubiquitous programs in every design office. ArchiCAD has a prettier GUI than Revit but I don't find it as robust for large projects.

Why fix what ain't broken? They're standards for a reason.

The standards are pretty broken insofar as they have all turned into yearly bloatware subscriptions.  I'm talking mainly about Autodesk and Abobe.  $250.00 a month for a basic AutoCad seat  is bullsh*t.

$2,500 a year for a seat of building design suite (or whatever the fuck the new collection is called) is cheap. Way cheap.

Bluebeam, particularly the sessions for live mark up and coordination of pdf's.  Owner, GC, consultants, etc. all marking the same documents and seeing others markups.  It's a must have.  Also used for in-house reviews and team distribution.  

We're slowly pulling away from Sketchup and Rhino and just rendering out of Revit.

Alternative's depending on the project type:  I've issued 'drawings' out of illustrator.  Basically, a few pdf hand sketches, scanned, some autocad details, existing photos noted, specifications, manufacturer details, etc.  for historic and small TI projects. Essentially using Illustrator to pretty it all up and make it look like more than just a hodgepodge of media. 

Oh.. and the dirt cheapest way: Hand draft + Written Reports/Narrative.  Seriously; I've run $6million dollar repair projects like that.  Existing drawings, scan what you need, draw what you need to convey, rescan and print.  

In the olden days, we'd call it a stickyback drawing set.  (basically a xerox cut and paste job)

Something to hold close to your chain of thought; The drawings ARE NOT what the client is buying or what you are selling.  It is the thoughts behind it and your ability to communicate it so the final constructed chunks are done right.  How you get from point A to B is irrelevant as long as you can get there.  I've seen napkin sketches with more thought conveyed than some full drawing sets....

^^ mighty, i'd agree and that is a given, I guess the question is whether these cheap alternatives, as tools themselves are now capable of standing on their own delivering good drawings and presentations. And I would commend on a workflow that does exactly that. 

@Null, yes it is relatively cheap but certain situations do not always justify purchase of a whole suite. 

I'd consider rhino cheap... and at the stage of the job I'm on (SD) it's fine to model/render/output drawings. Can do DD/CD, but would start to become cumbersome.

Bang for buck though, rhino takes some beating.

you know the answer bro. barbecue sticks, corrugated boards, plaster of paris + glue gun in 1:25 scale. thats what SANAA does, Herzog does, Eisenman does.

Simulation using hands. Cheapest but MOST effective without a doubt

What sort of fucking crack are you smoking? I've worked with those offices. We got a ton of CAD files from them. Stop spreading lies.

The other I haven't seen mentioned is 'verbal': More of the old 'master builder' technique and mindset.  

Not economical, but honestly the best.  Basically you are in the field most the project, working directly with the trades, swapping ideas, methods, etc. to achieve the results you want.  It also takes a strong relationship with the Building Dept. where they have trust and a particular kind of client who is interested in the quality.  So the CD's are bare minimum and the rest is you waving your hands around and lots of real conversations with the guys who do 'that' for a living passing onto you their experiences and knowledge of how to make it.  

^^ I know a small scale residential firm that operates this way. They built up a portfolio of interesting small-scale work (interior design, furniture etc) while in school and then worked their way up to private homes. If there's a weird detail they just go to the site and help build it with the contractor, but otherwise they keep the construction pretty simple and focus on novel spatial layouts. Pretty cool.

I'd like to do a charet or join a competition, create a good composition using these "indie" programs, that itself would be an art would you agree? ;)

I've been using DraftSight for the past few weeks. It works really well for producing 2D hard-line drawings and even has a similar interface and tool set to LT.

Pair that with SketchUp running some Ruby plugins and V-Ray and I've got pretty much all I need to document a project.

I'm gonna attempt to teach myself Revit on the 30-day free trial as I don't think there's a comprable freeware version!

Sketchup is great, but to integrate with CAD need the Pro version for import/export. I use Vray on top of it, but that aint cheap. Student version can be had for cheap but I don't qualify anymore and they ended their beta test of v3. AutoCad LT is really all you need to draft, cheaper than full version, still does batch plot. Haven't tried any alternative drafting systems, the ones I know about don't have all the functionality of AutoCAD (eg Xrefs and full scale model space, layers, full dimension tools etc.) and seem to work more like illustrator where you are drawing to sheet scale. Would be curious about good alternatives that can output .dwg files though at this point I don't need to switch. Would get into Revit as I get bigger projects, but that's a big investment and would need to switch to PC as well.

xtbl - Does DraftSight use Xref, full scale model space and have batch plot?