back in college in dublin, we used autocad. we started of with version 12 i think, then 13, 14 and up to 2000. version 13 (if i remember correctly) was the first version to have a windows version aswell as the standard dos version. as far as we knew back then there was only one way to buy autocad, that was to spend a lot of money. something no one did. the college had proper versions, and we spent most of the time using the colleges computers from early in the morning to late in the evening. our first cad studio was a room where all the colleges students had access to, so we had limited access. as a consuquence most of the class did their drawings on using pen and paper. not the most efficent method.

anyway, version 13 was the first version we knew of that one could get illegally (the advent of cd burners and the internet made it more widespread). it was something that due to the then restrictive nature of the autocad licences that we had to do. our work load was such that the few hours that we could get access every day to computers just wasnt enough. 14 and beyond continued the trend. everyone now was doing all projects on computers. we all used autocad at home, virtually no one paid for it (except in one early incident to an unscrupulous classmate). we learnt illegally for our future careers. autocad just doesnt understand that student versions should be free.

a quick search on google showed that autocad 2005 student version is 200$ a year/380€lifetime from one vendor. also, i have vague memories of trying to buy autocad student version in dublin years ago, but facing a very very unhelpful seller there

i am now using archicad for my current course. there are two types of archicad. the commercial one and the educational one. the educational one is for students and universities. they share a file format that isnt compatible with the commercial version, and it has some other limitatations in exporting of files; but the programme itself works exactly the same as the commercial one. perfect for learning without the guilt. i just returned from the dealer here where i got the student version for 0€.