As a student of both AutoCAD and SolidWorks, I think you will find SolidWorks to be your best bet and if you a student you can get a copy of it for free! All you need is a student email address and you can get it from the main Solidworks site.

I feel held back when i use AutoCAD after using SolidWorks to be honest...AutoCAD is very clean and the only advantage is the command line functionality..but other then that...SolidWorks is by far better..IMO. Let us know what you end up going with and how it works for you, thanks!