The last time I used tape was in college and that was used on a lathe-type PCB machine. After college, everything was done in a CAD system (though schematics were drawn and netlists entered by hand for a few years). The boards were done by a positive system, too, so multi-layer and traces could be quite fine (three traces between .100" spaced IC pads were common).
Make 2:1 or 4:1 models of each footprint?