Hello,
I’ve been away from Blender for some 7 years and had a hard time getting back into it, while exploring F360 / Solidworks for 3D FDM printing.
I found that there are things that you can’t do in one or the other world yet (parametric solid modeling vs. mesh modeling) and want to find workflows that can bridge that gap. I know, there are ways to do it already, but most are still clunky. Fact is, there’s this gray area still that would be very powerful to master.
Step 1 : Get really good at mechanical CAD and 3D printing: Check! 
Step 2 : Get good at mesh modeling with Blender/Zbrush, etc.
Step 3 : Figure out a way to combine the two worlds.
This idea might be a little confusing at first. Hear me out please. 
What I’m trying to do is to bring mechanical elements and mechanisms that have been designed outside of Blender in. From there, we can kit-bash what we know works and continue from there to create amazing STL’s that are marketable to the 3D printing world.
To get back up to speed in Blender, I picked a complex and frankly very poor mesh from the Smithsonian: A crab, which was CT scanned but the mesh needed a lot of work, reposing and repairs for this project. A few of the limbs were stuck/welded together along with many other issues. I got all that cleaned up and it checks out now as a manifold body, zero face and edge issues down the list (just that was countless hours of work).
How to live size 3D print this guy in FDM is another story and perhaps even print in place articulate some joints, please stay tuned.
