Hello this is my first post and I need some advice.

First let me say that although I've used and worked on pc's for years I have absolutely no experience with any kind of CAD software. I also have zero experience in drafting. I have worked construction for 15 years so I do know how to read blueprints.

I do part time tech support for home owners and one of my clients builds commercial playgrounds. He wants to branch out to designing them as well. Right now he and the people he works for rely on someone in England to create the drawings for the playgrounds. While the man does excellent work the logistics of him being in England and the work being done in the US and Canada makes speedy changes and updates problematic. He has asked me to do the drawings.

I'll try to describe the playgrounds. For the most part if you can imagine cubes made of tubular pipes stacked on top and next to each other to make a frame work for the various tube slides, nets, and various other amusements, sort of like old fashioned monkey bars but with tubes and such. My client wants to be able to create 3d drawings for construction and presentation purposes. I know AutoCAD can be used for this but I also think AutoCAD would be serious overkill.

What I need is advice on either a CAD or design program that will let me do 3d multilevel designs but isn't quite so overwhelming in price or features as autoCAD would be.

I've managed to find a picture similar to the types of playgrounds my client builds and wants to design. The pic will be inserted in this post but if for some reason it doesn't display just e-mail and I'll send it to you.