You have a total of 17 different default shapes you can insert into your design in addition to a bunch of community-made shapes made using a JavaScript-based shape generator. Here you only add primitive shapes into your design like boxes, cylinders, spheres, plus some less common ones. This is where Tinkercad really lacks tools you find in most other CAD software. The cube will rotate around this workplane’s XYZ-axes instead of the default ones. The red cube is added to the workplane along one of the sides of the yellow pyramid. If the surface is ramped, for instance a side of a pyramid, the coordinate system will temporarily change, making in easy to move an object relative to a side of the pyramid, change the axes for rotation and so on. If you press W you can select a surface that will be the new workplane. When you add a shape to the design it automatically snaps to the current workplane. This is one of the more original features in Tinkercad. Scaling a cylinder in two dimension along the XY plane brings up the new dimensions. When performing transformation, the value (moving distance, scaling size or rotation degrees) will pop up so you have full control over every transformation-related business. All is done from a gizmo-like interface when you select an object. The way you move, scale and rotate objects in Tinkercad is really intuitive and nice. You’re able to select between 6 different snap presets (0.1mm to 5mm or 1/64″ to 1/2″) or turn it off, and the setting is easily accessible. The snap functionality is important in this kind of software. This often makes it hard to place objects exactly where you want them. The camera is only in standard perspective mode, moving freely around the place. One thing that’s missing from the camera part of Tinkercad is orthographical projection, especially from the standard top, side and bottom views. There’s also a home button to return to default view and a fit view to selection button. There are also keyboard shortcuts to make your life easier if you’re on a laptop without a mouse. Rotate with right mouse button, pan with middle mouse button and zoom with the mouse wheel.
The camera controls are intuitive and easy to use. The default view of Tinkercad Features Camera Controls Therefore we’re going to take a closer look at it and its features. Tinkercad is made with makers (and as the name implies: tinkers) in mind, supporting file export for 3D-printing and laser cutting. However, if you find those programs a bit too heavy as well, you might want to check out Autodesk Tinkercad.Īutodesk Tinkercad is a free browser-based CAD program at its simplest, which we recently stumbled upon. We mentioned that Sketchup and Autodesk Fusion 360 are two good alternatives to the bigger and more expensive CAD beasts out there. A few weeks ago we wrote an intro to CAD for makers.
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