is drawing essential for 3d modeling/texturing...etc

[curious aardvark]

the answer is NO.
I can't even draw stick men.
Being able to reproduce something in 2d is totally unnecessary.
I have always been able to see and imagine things in my head but never been able to put them on aflat peice of paper. Not hand eye coordination, i' god at that.
Until I came across 3d modelling it never occurred to me what the actual problem is.
I think visually in 3d, the part that translates this to 2d for most people - I just don't have.
I'm actually quite good at sculpting. Just don't expect any preparatory drawings.
The actuall act of creating a3d model is how I 'draw'.
What you need is Openscad !

A total revelation to me. It lets me 'draw' in 3d by typing what shape I want and where I want it. Simple as that.
You simply tell it what you want and it makes it.
Mouse is only used for moving model around to different viewpoints.
It's pretty easy to learn and the more you use it, you faster you get at making things.
http://www.openscad.org/

Another advantage is that it only makes fully manifold 3d printable models. many programs will generate incomplete or non manifold models and can lead to extra steps before you print.
You should never have that problem with openscad.
Couple of useful links: https://cubehero.com/2013/11/19/know...s-in-openscad/
http://www.instructables.com/id/Open...-Instructable/

Don't worry too much when the official user manual does not make sense. It's not actually written in 'human'.
90% of relevant info you can get from the cheatsheet.

A lot of programmers use openscad and they have a weird (to me) way of writing their scripts. Basically as a non-programmer I just write scripts the way that makes sense to me. So don't feel you have to indent steps or write programs before modules or any of the other weird stuff programmers do.

One of the most useful things I did when I started openscad was download a short e-book from amazon.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/OpenSCAD-3D...words=openscad

Not that great for an absolute beginner - but does explain some more complex operations quite well. Used it a lot for adding text at the start. Been using openscad for about 4 years now. Never needed any other cad package.
There is now a proper 'text' command in openscad - but the way it's done in the book, lets you add text to cylinders and spheres as well, so useful to know both ways.

My scripts have got more efficient over the years. But looking back, I did make some pretty complex parts right from the get go - with a little imagination and some really long winded complicated looking scripts, you can make almost anything.

To start with: if I was doing repetitions I would just copy and paste the same line a lot and manually change the values.
These days I'll mostly just a single line with a 'for' loop and a variable.
Same result, just less typing and more versatility.
Another positive is that all scripts are just text files. So you can write them anywhere and on anything and they tale up negligible storage space.
There are online versions of openscad and also a couple of useful android versions. Though for those I recommend a seperate bluetooth keyboard as the on-screen keyboard tends block most of the screen.

Oh yeah and it's free :-)