An Alternative to Corel???

What I mean is that drawings and wilcom are both add ons to Corel Draw. You have to have Corel in order to use these programs. I am wondering if there is software that utilizes Adobe Illustrator as its base program. For me this would be great as that is what I use at work so my knowledge level is high and I would only have to figure out the digitizing part of the sequence. If Corel Draw is the only horse we have to work with then I would have to learn that as well as the digitizing sofware (which ever that would be (what do you recommend)?? I have been to your website and it looks like you are pretty knowledgeable with digitizing. My thoughts would be to have the intricate pieces brokered out to digitize and I could do the simple pieces inhouse. I do not know what AUTO digitizing is so. I know that Drawings and Wilcom both save out their files into different formats for the different machines that everyone has. I am just wondering if there is an easier way (software that I already know) to do this. Please keep asking me questions like this because the more you ask, the more I learn. I know, kind of of wierd way of helping but it works. Thanks.