No, I can't really compare. Back then, I needed to model a not too complicated geometry for some scientific programming applying raytracing to calculate some view factors. BRL-CAD provided all the tools I wanted (raytracing with `nirt` command: http://brlcad.org/w/images/f/fe/Interactive_Raytracing_-_The...) and I could finish that job in quite short time, this was really nice. But I have no wider CAD experience.