I'm not aware of anything else that does what BB does...as far as entering chords and it plays....

There are some really fine string packages out there... look at the Native Instrument strings as well as the Garritan package..... both are fairly low cost but still sound good.

Unfortunately, unless you have a keyboard, mousing the notes into the song will be the only way. Look into BB to see if it will give you a midi track for a pad. You could then substitute a string sample and be halfway there.

Mousing takes a phenomenal amount of work and time. Although I must say, I heard a classical orchestral composition in the Sonar song forums several years back where the person posting the work claimed it was 100% entered by mouse into PRV. Even better, it had multiple tracks with the various orchestra instruments AND.... it was all done using nothing but TTS.

Pick up an inexpensive keyboard. I've seen them for sale at music stores for around $60 brand new. Playing string parts is mostly one note at a time, and generally whole notes..... so the string parts tend to be easy to play.

You can find my music at:
www.herbhartley.com
Add nothing that adds nothing to the music.
You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both.

The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.