It would be interesting to compare the results here between people with a product design or manufacturing background vs. someone with different backgrounds. I

It would be interesting to compare the results here between people with a product design or manufacturing background vs. someone with different backgrounds. I work in the mechanical design space and definitely solve problems with additive and subtractive solutions all the time, and it depends a lot on the context of the solution. This thinking almost certainly continues to other problems that I encounter in everyday lift. Machining, for example, is subtractive by nature, so initial solutions to a problem are usually additive since it costs money to subtract more, but something already made tends to be subtractive as you can't easily add material back. Conversely, for molded/cast parts, your design is initially subtractive as you want to use as little material as possible, but after the part is tooled, it becomes significantly more difficult to remove material, where adding material through modifications to the tool are relatively simple. Designing in a "steel safe" condition is a very common tactic for these types of parts.