Thanks--all good stuff. I bought the Creality on my own nickel as a trial basically-and at $350 bucks it has already paid for itself in making optical bench parts that can cost $1000 of more, But I am sure it is over-advertised and maybe a bit obsolete. As I mentioned that parts are all "generic" so it can be maintained forever--sort of like a model A ford. (;->
. But if we decide that 3D has use in the lab (and it does) we will probably opt for a better machine when the time comes. Your Sapphire shines here. And now that I have an inkling about what I am doing, I can pay more attention to the items that you mention.

Software is another issue--I work 2 contracts right now and am split between Solidworks, Inventor and Fusion. I only know option 3 and have ME"s do the designs on the other 2. Software breeding is a real problem in the engineering field-I have the same problem with electrical design. Someone landed an Altium circuit on my desk the other day and at $7000/seat I told them to redraft it. Besides I haven't used it in 10 years.
I never can be sure what software methods are really best--I think a lot of skill goes into that and I admire that vendors like Fusion even write it. I cobbled a crude python script to break out the Gcode, and comparing fusion to Cura for example reveals a lot of differences. Both make sense of course --so which is best! I certainly am not the guy to know. Simplfy3d is priced right and I would guess it is tuned pretty well since that is their main focus. All fun stuff of course-this took a whole new life since 50 years ago!

Thanks
Fritz