What did you think of Designing Tubular Frame Structures in Building Ultra Light-Weight Tubular Frame Vehicles, Part 1. That blew my mind the first time I read it. It seems to me if you use drawn wire (stretched enough that it's perfectly straight) and use pre-measured dollops of solder; then you could get a reproducible and therefore useful result.
About the software: All I see is $599, running on Windows, used to drive an industrial tubing bender. What's you OS and price point? Beyond ease of use, does it even do what you want? Which is probably
Finite Element Analysis....with some detailing—I liked Working With Tubular Frames for that.
Also, what was the topic for this thread again?