I know all the Vectric softare is well received but it's a little bit too 'eye candy' for me & I soon got fed up with the constant mouse/windows selection actions & drop down boxes etc.

Cambam is perhaps a good 'middle ground' application for a new user ....it's got some basic CAD functionality, but it also is very good at CAM.

That said, whilst I use cambam for the CAM aspect, for my needs, it's CAD capabilities are still a tad lacking vs. a full blow CAD package & so I tend to create a DXF file in CAD then import it into CAM - but if you're just after basic CAD'ing then CAMing (& I think CAMBAM excels at the CAM aspect), then it's a good contender.