aCs = ancient Chinese secret :-) i work with a couple of different software programs that were developed for me by my neice ... they're not available in the retail market (yet!) ... she still has a lot of kinks to work out ... i've been pleased , overall , but , as has been pointed out , the exterior applications do not offer the proper look i am seeking ... so we're working on that ... excepting library items , most of the drawings require hand-placement of each detail ... a bit time-consuming , but i am able to draft with much more speed than i ever could using CA ... thank you to all who left kind words ... it has been a pleasure to offer my assitance , and i look forward to futher requests ... my apologies to those who were hoping to procure these drafting tools , but , hopefully , my neice will be publishing in the not-too-distant future ...

I tried to obtain info on both SoftPlan and ChiefArchitect when we started designing. CA was very helpful, SoftPlan wasn't. They're big suggestion was that I as an engineer wouldn't understand their software and to just buy BH&G's dumbed down version of CA. Well I guess I should be thankful. My wife designed our floorplan on BH&G and while room layouts were OK, she had no luck getting floors lined up or roofs. We dumped the files and took them to an architect. He did a much better job than we could have on the exterior design anyhow. We still have pretty much the original floor plan. As for 3D, not only do we have some 3d renderigns, but there's a couple of cardboard models his assistant did floating around.

Thanks Sally. That's what we've been doing up to this point and I didn't see any need to change even with a store front, and we'll only be leasing shelf space in another store for now. I told dh I didn't think we needed to do any more than a credit card reader like paypal, but he thinks it would be too inconvenient for the store owner who will be handling the transactions. I doubt we will even have 5 store sales a week for a while.

I store my recipes as a Word document, I copy and paste, or PDF file, which I can "save as" on my PC and Mac. I very, very rarely transcribe recipes, and then only as a Word document. I can also scan in my favorite recipes from my cookbooks and my mother's recipe cards. I can search by name or ingredient. If I need to print it out, I can, or just plop my netbook on the counter. I also store them on a jump drive, so when I'm visiting my daughter, I have my recipes with me. I tried some recipe programs years ago and found them sadly lacking and too expensive.