Hehe, now that is funny... Everybody coming from CAD/CAM.

I also used Autocad 9 for a short time. Went then to CATIA for mil. related stuff and that's where I'm still most satisfied with if it comes to really big simulations.
For electrical engineering and circuit design I use mostly NI Multisim. Formerly "Electronic Workbench".

All the apps that started as true CAD have something technical in how the render results are looking. V3/V4 rendered within CATIA looks just not like if it's done within Maya. But both use mental ray. The same it is with almost any Max picture. There's something about it that just don't look right.

Connie, yould you elaborate "I've been investigating Torque game engine some, to see if their terrain generation is as snazzy as they claim it to be." please?

What impression you got so far and what tools you use for the modification/customization?

I used the UW engine back in ... 2004 or so. Was nice and all, but there were to many limits with the possible detail and there was no way to assign the required amount of information to the objects. It was easy to use tho. :/