> Tangentially, I wish there was some online resources for learning how best design for manufacture for things like laptops and cases.
You are effectively asking for a disclosure of shop secrets. Even in cases of completely no-name factories, there will be so much of clever things nobody would put on a paper.
One factory owner went nuts when we were going with inspection for a client in 2009, just because we clicked seemingly innocuous looking jig which was putting threaded inserts into mould. It later came out that nobody else anywhere had anything like that, and most factories rely on laborious process of manually putting inserts into the mould.
There is so many unobvious things which 99% of people without actual manufacturing experience routinely overlook in ubiquitous items around us.
I once been openning up dozens of laptop samples, and one in 100, from a noname factory had seemingly no ribs in its bottom cover, and seemingly nothing restraining it flexing, and sliding. Then, after days of hair pulling, the secret cracked.. nuts, and screws inside were not meeting
orcompletely, but were suspended with preloaded fasteners, which used those few free millimetres of free travel for it.