Not cheating, but probably also not good or effective or efficient design.
Are the designs good? How many designs are being explored? How different are the design options? I’d bet anything I can do more quick sketches and variations in 10min than anyone can do in CAD.
Adding lines to a CAD model is not a sketch. That’s just a waste of time.
Sketching on top of a CAD underlay of competents or reference geometry for scale and dimensions is a different thing than going straight to CAD.
R