The thing is, I've crashed-and-burned every time I've tried to do traditional 3D CAD --- the closest I've come to success was making it all the way through the tutorial for Dune 3D:
OpenSCAD "just works", even on quite limited hardware, and if one has trouble modeling something, well, arriving at a solution is just a matter of learning the appropriate mathematics.
The way I learned CAD is the same way I approach programming projects. I tackle simple, bite size projects, which then increase in complexity until I have the skills necessary to tackle big complicated projects.
I found that standard CAD to be no simpler than OpenSCAD. Really, the biggest disadvantages that OpenSCAD have is usability and a library which is fixed by using BOLS2.
BOLS2 has the same problem as standard CAD, it is overwhelmingly big. In some cases, I didn't know features were already in BOLS2 so I don't have to reinvent the wheel writing my own inferior library.
So, how to tackle it? Same thing as any learning projects. I just tackle it in bite size chunk.
To be honest, I found Fusion 360 and Onshape very intuitive to learn.
>and if one has trouble modeling something, well, arriving at a solution is just a matter of learning the appropriate mathematics.
Which is the terrible thing about OpenSCAD. YOU need to derive the equations. In a modern CAD program you define the constraints on the object and the equations are derived for you.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37979758
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40228068
OpenSCAD "just works", even on quite limited hardware, and if one has trouble modeling something, well, arriving at a solution is just a matter of learning the appropriate mathematics.