Is there an easier/more intuitive way to model a robot for ROS then manually programming its geometry in an XML file?

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Is there software for modeling the URDF robot like in CAD or at least a list of shortcuts to cut-down time for manually re-compiling XML files over and over again to move stuff into the right positions/rotations?

To each his own, but after you get a bit more comfortable with it, being able to simply load a text file (xml is essentially just text) into an editor and quickly tweak a constant (ie: length of a link, rotation of an axis) here and there is actually really convenient.

Note: I'm not saying there aren't legitimate use-cases for wanting to use a CAD program, but it's a rather large overhead to have to start it all up, change something, save, export, copy over, etc. @Teo Cardoso already mentioned some of the plugins for some CAD tools you could use.

Having written all of that: you could take a look at the ROS plugin for VSCode. It has support for almost live preview of URDF/XACRO while you're editing it (screenshot from here):

You'd still be editing text, but it would cut down on the iteration that seems to be your biggest annoyance.