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Counterweights don’t need to take a straight path to the ground. The force a weight pulls on a surface is based on the tangent.

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True but by adjusting the angle you still end up with a fixed weight throughout the run. A spring force changes throughout the movement of the garage door and that’s chosen to match the unusual fact that the garage door’s weight changes as it’s gets progressively rolled up onto the top rails.

A fixed weight but not angle means the force varies. Cut the cable and acceleration would therefore also vary with that angle along the track.

Springs make a lot of sense from an installation perspective and can be easily tuned to match the specific door design, but if I was working from scratch on a DIY project I would prefer to use a counterweight if there was somewhere it fit.

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