I was wondering how practical it was for renderings for monument signs and such. I know the Autodesk has a steep learning curve(for me anyway)
I guess it would depend on how much time you have(want) to invest in getting up to speed with rendering.
You have a bunch of options to pick from.
Pirces range from free (Blender) to several thousand dollars.
I think Rhino might be your best bet when working on Autocad files outside of Autocad. Price is just about $1K. It has a built in render engine and does a pretty good job with Acad files. They have a fully working demo so you can see if it will do what you want. Rhino support is also about the best in the business.
There are cheaper solutions but most all of them will require more work to get DWG or DFX files in and set up to render, i.e. XSI Foundation at just $500.
If you have specific questions or would like to see what could be done with one of your files let me know. I can do some sample renders and show what it took to get them set.
wayne k
guam usa