If you are looking in the areas inhabited by Solidworks and AutoCAD, also look at Rhino 5. If you are engineers, how are you creating your designs now?

Since you are associated with a college, the best solution for you is an inter-faculty team. Go to the Graphic Design people and see if someone there wants to team up with you.

Before you go investing in high end CAD, try playing around with some of the open source stuff.

Old Man Emu