[Tossrock]

I find CNC is a time-saver for one-offs when the work is complex enough that it'd be difficult-to-impossible to do by hand, eg complex curving cuts, engraving/pockets, etc.

I actually saw an unusually straightforward example of this last year - a group of friends and I were making instances of Tyler Gibson's 1-sheet portable bike rack design (it's great, check it out: https://www.thetylergibson.com/building-a-better-portable-bi... )

One group of two-ish people used jigsaws to manually cut the pieces, and I used a Shopbot 4'x8' CNC router. Very roughly, it took about twice as many man-hours to make one by hand, vs by CNC, and the result was less clean. CNC could have done even better, but due to warping of the sheet, it failed to cut all the way through in places, and I had to do a cleanup pass with the jigsaw. And once the upfront cost of generating the toolpaths etc was paid, it would improve again.