Over the past year or so I purchased some LED lighting from Amazon,...all of it Barrina brand. My initial purchases was 6 of the 4000K units

I have a .dxf file for a layout design, and would like to open and edit (e.g. modify) the plan but am unsure if there's an existing model railroad design software product out there than can do so. The original - that was given to me by the author - was originally developed in AutoCAD, which is not only beyond my budget but also too steep of a learning curve for a layman like myself.

Any commercial options out there that can open a .dxf format file, that are geared towards a hobbyist like myself?

Somewhere I got the notion that having a turnout on a grade was bad for reliability. Is that so? Assuming the grade is constant through the turnout, so the turnout is flat, just not level with respect to the floor. 

In my track planning, I'm looking at a choice between:

a) shortening a grade so it lies between turnouts, resulting in a 2.5% grade when I was trying to stick to 2% or less,

b) moving a turnout, resulting in shortening my yard,

I am thinking of running my layout using motive power of the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railroad, and am very much aware of the tragedy that occurred in Lac Megantic, Quebec.  I want to be respectful: would modeling this railroad be insulting to my Canadian friends?