Being able to build a scale model is fun, but of course I had to dig deeper. I started getting a better idea of stress points, weight distribution, and torsion. I wasn’t interested in how it looks. I needed to know if it works. It was becoming a pebble in my shoe. It had to get out of my head. Digital drawing sure did beat sketchpads. But I was only a doodler. Only a few months prior had I even attempted to draw anything three dimensional. AutoCad and the like were not an option. I’ve seen enough to know there are dummies like me, looking for an easier way.

After discovering TickerCAD, a beginner level AutoCad, I started to feel like I had some kind of chance at a being a shadetree engineer. It was as big a leap from scale models as a digital tablet was from sketching. I was really moving along until it started to hit me. Even though I was only using variations of basic geometric shapes, there’s no substitute for actual schooling. My glorious TinkerCAD projects had begun to look like what they really were, glorified Legos.

Time is plentiful as a kid. I didn’t know how I’d find actual time to learn real 3D drawing. Never one to give up, I made time to learn. It was slow and frustrating, but I kept trying. Suddenly, for no particular reason, I decided to try something else. What everyone else seemed to be using…A.I.

It’s nothing new, but like most people, I assumed it was just a better Google. From my first attempt on ChatGPT, I was hooked. I hear a lot about AI taking jobs. To guys like me, it’s a god-send.