Works for me. Perhaps it's because I'm a touch dyslexic as well. The sketch is just an anchor for what's in your brain, I think?

I know you wanted to look at Solid Works for such things, but have you ever played with Sketchup? It is no good for exporting to a CAD/CAM compiler, but is GREAT for fiddling about and planning projects in 3D. And? It's free!

It has provision for showing all dimensions, internal and external, etc. You can also texture your model and render it with a number of open source rendering programs.