I'm surprised the cad software doesn't have that capability built in. Seems like it would be very handy.
It is built in to most of the programs, but when I'm just dragging out boxes and roughing things in I don't want to start dimensioning or specifying relations and it is easier if things just land in the right place. SolidWorks is big in this, getting the relationship mostly right first can save massive headaches. One of the programs I use for house design stuff (Chief Architect X5) doesn't actually have this capability for certain classes of objects.
Sorry, I didn't realize you wanted to see the pixels. That makes sense now. Is this the Zeppelin you want to build?
Designing stuff is by far my biggest hobby at this point. Everything from the remodel of my house to car stuff to whatever. I spent a day doing the layout for the manifolds for the sprinkler systems in the front and back yards before I built them. I spent 9 months doing a complete layout of this house before we even closed the paperwork. Everything from which walls we were going to tear down and where doors/windows would go to the colors of the rooms and finish of the hardware. Once it became clear that our ambitions exceeded our cash I was able to split the project into phases, with the house being livable and functional in each without having to redo anything done in a previous step.
The Zepplin was more of a design/feasibility study. How much would it have to weigh? How big would the envelope need to be to lift it? How much power would you need to maintain a reasonable speed based on how big it is? How much would it cost? How does that compare to a luxury yacht or top end apartment (Monaco, NYC, Tokyo)? The result of all those came out quite positive, and I'm in the process of a market study at the moment.
Current stuff I'm doing ties into my interest in fabricating stuff out of Carbon Fiber. I have a decent 3D scan of the front of my car that I'm converting to a SolidWorks model. Once there I'll be able to play with CFD and make modifications before construction.
In the past I've used SolidWorks to design some of my quadcopters and plan out component placement for cable routing, center of gravity, and total mass calculations before construction. Still working on the one that can lift a 7D with a 28/1.4.