I got into making all kinds of stuff because of OpenSCAD. It's just enough for 3D printing functional mechanical parts. It's still my first go-to for designs. The downside is OpenSCAD doesn't support import or export of STEP files... So I've also added FreeCAD to my toolbox. But I really wish OpenSCAD would/could do whatever refactor it needed to support STEP.
Yes -- the STEP thing was a big part of why I wanted to switch.
I actually switched via CadQuery: a few minutes with that made it clear that the bits I didn't understand (edges, faces, planes, all that stuff that freaked me out) were simple and logical and had a sort of common sense integrity, and that I might as well try to learn them in the context of FreeCAD.
Had Build123D existed at that point, or Replicad, maybe I'd have pushed on for longer. Build123D is my "fallback toolbox" at this point.
I don't think OpenSCAD can produce STEP, ever. Importing it is another matter; that's a one-way meshing operation. But creating it means having a kernel that understands more than CSG operations -- a bRep kernel like OpenCASCADE, that FreeCAD/Replicad/CadQuery/Build123D etc. use.
You can of course run your OpenSCAD in FreeCAD, but certain operations (hulls, Minkowski I think?) end up as meshes, because there is no easy equivalent. Still, that's better than every operation ending up a mesh.
