no problems with either creating items or accessing the armorbench. I downloaded Armorsmith extended and awkcr a while back through bethesda ( Like i said, easy methods) but due to the limitations of the mods i have started going to nexus to grab ones only available there using NMM to add them. I've done little modding and for the most part stayed with the easy methods.
First of all, you'll have to forgive me if this is a pointlessly obvious solution to this.