Not bad, but not good either. I gave the trial version a test, and as far as I can tell it has automated the steps I was attempting: explode mesh, extrude faces, union solids. It solves the issue of non-coplaner faces by breaking them into triangular faces. Results are the same, however, whenever I try to subtract, intersect, union, etc the created solids:

"Modeling Operation Error:
Inconsistent edge-face relationships."

SketchUp treats everything as meshes, faces and lines, but I can combine them in a number of different ways: groups, components, or by layer. This allows me to treat them as solids, even though they are not. The big advantage is that I can cut surfaces meshes into any outline I want. I can also cut a block with a mesh. But I have to do them in separate steps on seperate layers, do a whole bunch of deleting of leftovers, and then finally combining the results. Complicated, but I'm getting better at remembering the steps. (In SketchUp, clicking on an object multiple times continually breaks that object into component parts, allowing you to quickly delete, extrude, paint, single objects or whole components. Nice feature.)

The advantage to doing this in CAD as solids is that it would save me several steps by automatically creating the new faces resulting from the solids commands.

Still, it works. And the results are what I have been working towards.

As always, thanks for your help with AutoCad, SDG.