Wow I haven’t read a good chunk of this list, and I thought I was a sci-fi book afficionado. Thanks for adding to my summer reading list! Might start with either Parable of the Sower or Never Let Me Go.

I would also recommend checking out SALOME for 3D modeling. I’ve been using the shaper toolbox to create geometry for fluid simulations and it’s worked well for me. The shaper toolbox is parametric (as opposed to SALOME’s geometry toolbox which is not).

After you’ve created your geometry in shaper you switch to the mesh toolbox to create your stl file. I think there’s really good control over the triangle creations with SALOME. For example, you can specify edges and faces you want smaller triangles in (like around tight geometries, holes, etc). I’ve been able to get much higher quality stl files with this method than with freecad.

SALOME is free and open source software.

Recently I used SALOME for doing CAD. The Shaper work bench has parametric modeling with the sketches that you extrude or cut from. I found it powerful and easy enough to use that I replaced my freecad workflow with it. The big thing that sold me over freecad was the simplicity of creating more complex triangulations for stl export, and easily grouping faces for export into different files.

I haven’t tried any complex surface creation, I wouldn’t be surprised if it falls short in that regard. I guess feature wise it probably doesn’t have everything freecad or fusion 360 has, but I found it works great for my needs. Great for 3d printing and geometry creation for CFD simulations.