There is lots of discussion here about OpenSCAD vs the OpenCascade family. I recently modeled a simple plaque with cadquery and was surprised how long the rendering took. A full 30+ seconds for a lathed part with text extrusion and a radial pattern of cutouts.
For me, modeling is just as much about figuring out the shape and features of an object as it is producing a STEP. I would love to model an object in a GUI then re-edit the file with code and re-render with a library, not the least reason being that GUI tools render multiple orders of magnitude faster.
See if the rendering is any faster with my tool, it uses freecad to visualize cq/build123d objects. I've noticed some complex gemetries at least seems to render faster this way. https://github.com/madushan1000/freecad-ocp-viewer
For me, modeling is just as much about figuring out the shape and features of an object as it is producing a STEP. I would love to model an object in a GUI then re-edit the file with code and re-render with a library, not the least reason being that GUI tools render multiple orders of magnitude faster.