I started my professional career as an Engineering Technician - machining, assembling, plumbing, and wiring machines, fixtures, and small automation at a plastic injection molding and assembly company. Then moved up to Automation/Manufacturing engineer so I could also design the equipment I built and program the PLCs. I used IronCAD for the 3D mechanical design work and Via Schematic on top of AutoCAD LT for the electrical and pneumatic schematic design. I eventually became the Secondaries Manager (talk about a made-up title!), which meant I managed a small team of technicians that was charged with improving production efficiency (mainly reducing scrap) by improving secondary equipment.
While working with IronCAD for my real job, I created and maintained iccentral.com, which was a community based website for IronCAD users, with free downloads of models, textures, and tools; animated tutorials (Viewlets); a tips and tricks section; and a message board. Sound familiar? I should have named it IC Communities! Eventually I shut the site down since I could not justify the cost of the web hosting fees and was supplying 90% of the content, with not many others in the community contributing. But it was pretty cool looking at the site statistics and seeing there were visitors from around the world.
Then I shifted gears and joined ECT International supporting promis•e software in 2007.
Remember, electricity is angry!