Initially, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this course. The scope sounded broad, and in practice it does try to cover a lot of ground—from functional requirements to digital mockups and printed parts. From a senior engineer’s perspective, the value was in how CAD decisions were tied to downstream manufacturing, not just geometry creation. The discussions around tolerance stack-up and GD&T were especially relevant, and the examples mapped well to aerospace lightweighting use cases and automotive tooling constraints. One challenge was adjusting to the additive-first mindset. In industry, especially automotive, designs still often start with subtractive assumptions, so thinking through overhang limits, build orientation, and lattice edge cases took some effort. File translation issues between CAD and slicers were another pain point that felt very real. Compared to typical aerospace workflows, certification and traceability were only lightly touched, but the system-level implication of poor CAD practices on cost and rework was clear. A practical takeaway was building manufacturability checks directly into early CAD reviews instead of treating them as a late-stage gate. Overall, the difficulty felt moderate, but it did force a reset of some habits. It definitely strengthened my technical clarity.