How to use TinkerCAD to make complex designs.

You have just thought of the worlds most ingenious invention. You can just imagine the money pouring in. But their's a catch. You have no idea how to make your 3D model. Well, I have a solution - and a guide.

Tip:

You want a clear idea in your head what you want to make. This will help you out a lot in the process of modelling.

Contents:

1.  The basics - how to use TinkerCAD
2.  Orthographic view
3.  The best way to transform your objects without offset
4.  Grouping and how useful it is

1. The basics - how to use TinkerCAD

First of all, you'll have to be signed into TinkerCAD and have a new project open. The diagram bellow will show you all the different parts of the UI.

The TinkerCAD UI

(Sorry about the strange image behaviour)

To add a shape, simply drag and drop from the right shape menu. Bellow is a diagram of the control panel.

The shape control panel

The option to the right of the colour options don't touch for now. I will cover this in this tutorial, so don't worry.

The best way to learn is to try it out yourself, so I suggest spending a few minutes messing around with shapes and getting comfortable with the controls.

Moving the camera:

1.  Right click to rotate around the workplane
2. Middle mouse button to move the camera's position
3.  this will make all the objects in the scene be in the cameras view. If an object is selected, then it will make that object fill the viewport. It is pretty useful.
4.  The plus and minus icons bellow that are obviously zoom, but I find it a lot easier to use the scroll wheel.

2. Orthographic View

Orthographic view is something that you'll never see in real life. It basically flattens the image, so there is no perspective. If you are looking directly forward at an object, you will never see the side of the object, only the front. This is useful for positioning things as you can accurately see where they are in relation to the object or the grid on the workplane. Bellow is an image demonstrating this.

Perspective vs Orthographic views

I use this every time I make a model. Use it too.

3. The best way to transform your objects without offset

First, click and drag on the cube in the top right left until you can see the text "top". Then, click on it and enter orthographic view. You now have a perfect view on your model. Suppose that you wanted to resize a object, but if you resize it like this it starts to offset and move away from the position you wanted to be in.

Not the best way to resize

So to make centred transforms, you take the amount of millimetres you are taking away from the side, and divide it by two. Remove this value from the current amount.

Half of five millimetres taken away

Now, take notice to the squares on each corner. In the image above, the top left corner is red. Click on the bottom right corner.

The bottom left corner

Now, when you change the value, it will transform in the other direction, meaning in the end the shape will stay in the position it was in at the start. Remove the last half millimetres that you calculate. For me, it was 2.5mm, so now I will change it to 15mm.

The end result

Now, your object is smaller, yet not offset. It seems a bit of a random tip, but you will use it a lot, especially in the next part.

4. Grouping and how useful it is

When making complex shapes, you need to fuse objects and also remove bits. This is the solution.

To fuse two objects, it is super simple. Make sure they are in the position you want them to be in, and then select both, and tap the icon that is near the top right.

Fusing two objects together

This is really simple, and now bring us to our next objective - making holes in objects. Now the way to do this is to fuse a negative object with the object. Remember when I told you not to touch the option to the right of the colour options. Now you can touch it. This turns the shape into a negative object. Wherever the negative object was, when you fuse it, it will create a hole.

With these skills, you can create immensely complex shapes. Thanks for reading!