> Every time I've used as a CAD GUI program I would get to this point where I would need to alter a single dimension by 0.25mm and realize that _all_ of my fastener holes, cutouts, etc have to be nudged with the keyboard or mouse to accommodate it.
I am just starting to learn CAD and FreeCAD - also dabbled a bit in OpenSCAD. But I do know that FreeCAD has Spreadsheets [1] and Configuration Tables [2] which allows you to define your model parameterically and changes values as needed.
How good this is, I don't know yet.
[1] https://wiki.freecad.org/Spreadsheet_Workbench [2] https://wiki.freecad.org/Configuration_Tables
It’s a fantastic feature and works really well, my problem is I can never invest the required time to learn the interface. It all falls apart when I need to switch modes to move something or whatever. With scad can usually knock whatever I want together pretty quickly without having to relearn how to use the tool.
Spreadsheets are really slow in FreeCAD. I'd suggest you look into Varsets [0] if you don't need some of the fancier capabilities that spreadsheets provide.
[0] https://wiki.freecad.org/Std_VarSet/en
Yes, VarSets are definitely better (more granular dependency recalculations).
The little-known Configuration Tables aspect of Spreadsheets is absolutely worth using, though, and has no equivalent in the VarSets scheme at this point. Once you get that set up it is great fun.