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Best Of
Re: Thickness analysis.
if you're on the standard plan, sadly this is not available. :-( (i.m.h.o. it should be, this is standard CAD analsysis stuff). In that case there's a custom feature by @MichaelPascoe :
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/55e98155dca4ba4e8049a18d/w/dbf02fb86aafef13f08be126/e/67100c66e805cdf37822750a?renderMode=0&tangentEdgeStyle=1&uiState=684ff1f95854d0479d7932da
Re: Using partQuery in FeatureScript to retrieve parts
I recommend the first approch. Here's a public document that shows how the feature can work: https://cad.onshape.com/documents/0f85058bb5f40b8535a4f8de/w/7daa1dc09bec441651d39f8d/e/0637ea3ac59e4d5f24be41b1
To answer your question, on the FS side, the query is just a query. For work with the API, Onshape exposes the query as a partId.
New Feature: Better Than Boolean
Coming to Onshape from Solidworks and Fusion 360 there was a gap in the feature set that I was missing from both of these tools. In Solidworks the feature was called Intersect and in Fusion the feature is called Boundary Fill. In each of these softwares the feature does basically the same thing, which is enable disgustingly lazy modeling practices where you can kitbash parts together keeping the functional bits of part A and part B and discard the leftovers in one go. I couldn't go on living without this jackhammer of a tool in my belt so I went ahead and developed my own implementation in Featurescript. I present to you: Better Than Boolean.
It works by decomposing input bodies into their overlapping regions and allows you to select which chunks of Venn Diagrammed part you'd like to reconstitute into a single manifold body, throwing away the rest.
Okay that's not that impressive, you could do that by selecting regions of sketch and just not extruding the bits you didn't want. But what if you wanted to make a manifold body?
For example let's say I want to 3d print a garden hose manifold and I wanted not to waste time modeling threads. Of course I'd derive a single part into a studio to simplify the modeling process. But I'd also have to define a cutting tool to remove geometry for the water to pass through, and I'd have to trim parts off of my tool body to make sure the internal bits don't interfere with each other or the manifold body. That's a lot of work, and I'm lazy.
Before:
After:
Now if you're familiar with either of those implementations of tools I mentioned before you'll be aware that they also allow enclosing of regions via planes and surfaces. This is not yet supported by this tool, but is something I might add in the future. Would probably require a complete refactor of the decomposition logic which is currently being done purely by bounding box checks, evCollision, and a whole mess of boolean operations under the hood. I'm putting this out there in the current state because my core use-case is greebling parts together and not surfacing operations. One day when I figure out how to do a plane sweep algorithm I might rework the core logic under the hood to add the surface and plane functionality.
Re: Sketches: Equal offsets
There are a bunch of improvement requests around things like this.
I'm guessing since you can create a variable on the fly while in sketcher, and you can modify them in sketcher, Onshape isn't going to change things any time soon. It would be nice to have equals constraints work in more situations.

Re: Made my model parametric, but missed the blueprints I started from
a lotta work is relative. when first learning everything is a lotta work. Then you know how to do it and often find better ways to do the same things in the future and that same thing is not a lotta work anymore.

Re: Francis turbine spiral casing
Actually your example is precisely the KISS method. It's how I see a lot of blower housings designed in actual application. They're not particularly efficient but they definitely are cheap to produce for the vendors.
Course, if we can get a magic aerofoil featurescript I believe it's possible to abstract this turbine casing geometry into script form as well should someone be motivated enough to come along and do it. Maybe some day that person might be me. Until then, I'm content with my off-center circle housing.
Re: How can I quickly produce a 90 deg cruved part
Delete faces is like an intelligent magic eraser. I saw those little trenches were probably giving the algorithm trouble for sweeping or lofting etc. So if you just select the faces of those trenches and patch them up it will “heal”. When you sweep for example you can’t self intersects during the creation and it was probably doing that during the sweep in that area. Honestly if I were to do this from scratch I would use @MDesign idea with some variables for the face sweep profile sketch with another top sketch to guide the path with length and radius variables along with an offset amount for the end interlocking feature after the initial sweep.