>> Although the funny thing is if you use this to base your purchase off of, it just makes it all the more likely that the small business you are worried about supporting will be forced to sell out to a larger company

I heard that VSR was bought by Autodesk because almost everybody used their Rhino plugin, but sales weren't that high. Plugin was quite expensive, but now, as i can see it, this stuff will be only in Alias (other Autodesk CAD platforms are not targeted to this complex surface manipulation). And price of Alias is... well... It's not for individuals and hobbyists or small companies. That's the way to put it politely.