I tried CADQuery in the past, but struggled with the setup. With a very limited python background, it was suprisingly difficult to understand what prerequisites are required.

I already have python installed. Why do I need anaconda? What is anaconda? "A data science toolkit" (from their website) ? Why do I need that? Why can't I just "pip install cadquery" and expect it to work?

It turns out conda is an alternative package manager for python, and cadquery is only distributed via conda, not pip. I'm surprised this basic bit of information is (still) not explained in the docs.

The issue you created finally explained _why_ to me, so thanks for that :)

The problem is that cadquery depends on OpenCascade Technology (OCCT), a 3D geometry library. A full build is ~1.5GB, and it is the reason why the download for CadQuery is so big. PyPI is not meant for such large packages, and currently has no mechanism to allow for out of bounds binary downloads.