many architects work crazy hours and some make a lot of money. The Architects that make money in architecture do so because they run their practices as a business, not because they are the lucky ones.
To which you can say, let?s keep overheads down, or you could say we need to invest properly in the tools that make us the money. I know some Architects that run old versions of VectorWorks on old machines. Are these Architects reducing overheads? or are they refusing to invest in the tools that they use for most of the day to earn their money? Using old machines and old software is not working efficiently.
I agree that CAD requires an investment. It requires a continuous investment in computers, upgrades and training. Remember that products that you specify change, and get updated, and laws and building codes change and get updated. You have to invest time to learn these...
But it comes back to giving your practice the tools it need to complete the tasks that you want. VectorWorks is powerful and with the localised Australian and New Zealand version it has some great capabilities, you can do things that we could never dream of in earlier versions... and these make you more efficient, they improve the quality of your work and the quality of your presentation and some of the new concepts make creating drawings much faster (more efficiently).