hi,
to add my two cents, acad is a lot more than a pencil and eraser. by drawing in full scale, you can find out other info about what you're drawing that might not be apparent otherwise, and to me, that acad's real value, regardless of discipline.
what do you do with revisions if your dinemsions are exploded, start over?
it sounds like you should become more aquainted with the dimstyle manager. it seems that could solve a lot of the problems you mention, e.g. precision, text size, etc. also, for text placement, you can use grips to place without exploding. Another feature i find helpful is to alter the scale in the "fit" section. Where i work we use 11 x17 paper, so we also have problems with fitting things on the page and text legibilty.
sundemon