The thing that I liked (and i've not used many other programs) was the easy ability to assign a material to whatever surface you just layed out. If i wanted to design an Automobile Rim i could choose what alloy I wanted, Be it stainless, aluminum or any combination of things. You can also pull in material types from samples on the internet for something like a couch fabric design that you want to put on something in a building. The only other cad program i've used besides an early version of Autocad that my dad used to have (came on 3.5" floppys!) is intellicad and it was an on the cheap program that doesn't have many features. (Not sure if they even still sell that)