Visio Standard vs. Pro

[essegee]

I am pondering purchasing Visio for my company. Traditionally, I do all my drawings in Autocad as I have the experience in it, but many of my mfgr's have their equipment in Visio Stencils. I liason with consultants, architects, contractors, and installers. Most of their drawings are in Autocad, so I don't plan on rocking that boat.

Primarily, I intend to use visio to view stencils and export to a format that Autocad can use with the least amount of manipulation in either app. I have previously played with Visio, but was totaly underwhelmed by it in light of Autocad experience; mostly attributed to a learning curve yet to be traveled.

Anyway, if the above is my requirement,
1.) What would the extra $250-$300 for Professional deliver that Standard won't?
2.) Is there an alternative Visio replacement (pronounced cheaper or open source) that can read/manipulate Visio files in native format and get me an export to DXF, EMF, WMF, or even XML?

Thanks for any advice!

[Paul Herber]

I think that you can probably get away with just Standard for what you want to do.
Import of Autocad diagrams is a version or so behind the current release.
http://www.visguy.com/2006/10/26/visio-autocad/

There's no free/cheaper/opensource version but there is a viewer add on for IE, I think it's ActiveX or something, but it is only a viewer for Visio diagrams.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/visio/FX101757911033.aspx will give you an idea of the differences.