First of all congratulations for making it this far and sorry for taking so long to respond, I did not know there was a question pending. I wonder if you are setting the UCS properly? You should align the UCS X and Y axes into your new work plane before drawing your profile, it sounds like your UCS is still in "World".

Your second question relates to the AutoCAD configuration. If you type "options" at the AutoCAD prompt you'll get the Options dialog box, click on the "Display" tab and then in the top left corner select the box by "Display Screen Menu". That said, almost no one uses the screen menu anymore, its kind of a legacy now that we have all these pull downs and tool bars. Most find it not worth giving up valuable screen "real estate". As a matter of fact I'm not sure if the TimberCAD menu items work in the "2000" versions of AutoCAD. Its been years since I've used the screen menu.

Good luck and perseverance!