…floor plans, elevations, site plans etc.?
Generally speaking, any object-based vector drawing program is going to make more sense for that than a raster imaging program. Faster, more versatile, more editable, more numerically scaleable, more geometrically capable…
You work with objects, not just areas of colored pixels; much as you do in your drafting program.
There is a significant learning curve. Working in a vector drawing program is entirely different from merely painting pixels in a raster image. Also, as general-purpose vector drawing programs go, Illustrator is particularly weak in areas usually of interest to technical illustration: no dimension tools; no proper callout tools; unreliable snapping behaviors; no live geometric primitives; poor cutting tools; a useless "arc" tool....
AI's Symbols feature is a poor substitute for the kinds of object library in, for example, Canvas, wherein you can attach data attributes to stored objects. And Illustrator's whole scheme for all its "shared libraries" (Styles, Brushes, Swatches, Symbols) is comparitively cumbersome, because it is really more document-specific than a real application-level treatment.
Sure, you can just put up with all the archaic omissions in AI and get it done. But there's a strong possibility you'd be better off with Deneba Canvas, CorelDraw, or Corel Designer.
JET
