Thanks all for your input!
Michael Gibson emailed me with some more input specific to the project I am trying to get produced.
I can't show it publicly yet, but Michael thought it would be really hard to do in MoI or most NURBS CAD tools, so we decided to pay a local expert CAD guy to build the model for us. The manufacturers in China could not figure it out, but I think the guy here in the USA will do much better - with more tools, better direct communication and no language barrier. We shall see. ;-)
I will probably buy MoI anyway to start leaning NURBS - maybe next week - then Rhino when I get some more cash flow. It will probably be a long time before I can afford SolidWorks.
-Jeff