anyone use commercial invoices and have the xml code for an advanced pdf template?

I've done this, but I did it with a custom renderers. What I did was create the commercial invoices, bills of ladings, proformas, etc for international shipments and then integrated with the FedEx Api to attach those to the shipment, and print the label. There was a lot to it.

yeah, i was hoping to just throw a template together that would at least produce a usable document

The slick way is to integrate fully with the FedEx API. You're friends will be like whoa dude. I used to ship to every corner of the globe and we did tons of CIs/ProFormas/BOLs.... it was a major time suck and miserable work.