Autobiography of my CADD relationship

Summer 2001 – Fall 2002

Graduated High School after being heavy into drafting classes, and art classes, both traditional and digital. This is where my love of computer graphics generation began. I spent the entire summer of 2001 learning AutoCAD 2000i which a colleague had given me. No it was not legal, but I we all have skeletons in our closets, and I was young and dumb, and have since rectified my ways. I was enthralled with this computerized engineering and graphics generation. I joined deviantART in it’s infancy this summer.

Through contacts established there, I grew by leaps and bounds in my knowledge, mostly due to the help of Shea McCombs who taught me the general principles of modeling, rendering, material mapping, and basically exposed my virgin mind to a whole new world. He introduced me to what AutoCAD could do, and more importantly, showed me what it couldn’t do, that others could. I was introduced to Rhino3D and I was hooked. I knew this is where my life was headed.

Fall 2001 – Spring 2003

I entered college as an engineering student with intent on mechanical, with dreams of robotics or machine design. After one semester I knew that wasn’t for me. I switched to Computer Aided Drafting/Design, and got my hands on every drafting class the college had to offer. Except one; ironically, structural drafting. I went on to win various competitions at the collegiate level and was further cemented that this was my path in life. The drafting instructor hooked me up with the precision machining department, and combining my 3D models with his machining talent, we worked on creating all sorts of gadgets, gizmos, and toys for handing out with the college’s logo.

Fall 2003 – Spring 2005

After switching to Central Missouri State University for a third year of the bachelors program for CAD/CAM and Technical Illustration, after two years at ECC, I got introduced to some good software principles, but I knew I was maxed out. Academia had nothing more to offer me, and so I charged into the working world. I got my first CAD Design job at a metal fab shop where they volunteered me to major in ’sink or swim technology’. I got back with ECC and enrolled in precision machining and took a year of courses learning computer aided machining. My once virtual models… now came to life. I could now take these seemingly intangible models within the computer and take them to a machine, and with a little work and a lot of patience and control, give them reality.

Throughout this whole period, I was waist deep in online communities constantly learning from others, teaching others what I’d learned, and climbing my way up the unspoken hierarchy of peer-education. Constantly learning new software packages, but ever in love with AutoCAD (must be that first-love syndrome) I rounded my knowledge and refined it more and more; always striving for that incredible principle that maybe I would be the first to accomplish. I thought that there would be something I could do that would be new, or ground breaking. Maybe I could employ the incredible creative process to imagine something new, make it so, and achieve greatness and create something ingenious, or at least “cool”.

Fall 2006-present

Personal life endevours and a mutual decision, though pressured, to leave my design job led me to southern Louisiana after a year of working as fabricator and machinist (my love of creation is not isolated to the digital realm) and that’s where I began at my current job. I had tossed around the idea of enrolling in UL at Lafayette for some enrichment courses, and still keep that idea in the back of my mind, but somehow I don’t think it would ‘fit’ me. Time will tell.

Here I am, an ever-fervid, hungering vessel intent on mastering the tools at hand, and always pushing the boundaries of what can be done with the tools. Always striving to be the best at what I do, and with a love to help others, as many had shown me the patience and generosity to help get me where I am today.