Mostly the latter. I taught myself to model by roughing out a shape with cubes and cylinders in the correct dimensions, then refining everything as needed. Freecad seems to require a fully baked 2D sketch before I can extruded anything into 3D. I've succeeded in that a couple of times, but its always been a struggle.

Honestly, the biggest hurdle is probably just immersing myself in the learning curve. I was regularly modeling stuff for work when I learned DesignSpark, but I don't have much call for the skill lately.