The texture on this craft is painted in the editor with mostly built-in brushes, but I have used decals a bunch in my other projects for weathering and texture.
It definitely has a big learning curve. The editor is very basic in terms of modeling tools, but I like that it is pretty open in terms of design and shapes (relative to similar games), and even though it can take a long time and a lot of effort, it is pretty satisfying when something comes out looking and performing great.
This model is one of my most recent, but I have a few thousand hours in this game, although I have not been as active in the last couple of months.
I also take lots of notes and document my work, but I use OneNote or a wiki, and keep files and records in organized directories. I know people do what you describe and then email retention policy changes and suddenly all of that information is subject to deletion without their input and they have to scramble to copy all of it, if that is even allowed.
I've been saying that this exact thing is what corporate communication will change into because no one will admit that most of the content just doesn't need to exist. All the robots will be sending each other emails with no human reading them, but not because they are good enough to handle whatever is in them, but because none of it matters except the expectation that emails are sent and received periodically.
It's from an ad I got served that says "Do you like to take the alternate route?"