Every tool does what it is supposed to, but the combination doesn’t allow an infinite pallet of options. This is what I refer to as a ‘Linearly Frustrating’ in that the problem isn’t so much a failure of the package as much as a limitation on how much you can do with the limited suite of primitives and manipulation tools offered. Unfortunately, Tinkercad runs out of gas fairly quickly when designs require sophisticated treatment like morphing from one shape to another (an ellipse to a rounded rectangle in my case), or when reshaping objects after rotation. This makes it child’s play to construct fairly complex objects in rotated and/or displaced local coordinate systems. The Workplane concept is particularly powerful in that it allows you to quickly define the plane on which the next primitive will be placed and manipulated. It has a very intuitive GUI, and it takes almost no time to become proficient and productive with its very simple set of primitives along with a robust set of manipulation features (WorkPlane, Group/Ungroup, Adjust/Align, and Solid/Hole). Tinkercad is an absolutely amazing 3D design application. I have decided to coin the phrases ‘linear frustration’ and ‘Nonlinear frustration’ to describe the differences between 123d Design and Tinkercad. MeshMixer is such a different program than either 123d Design or Tinkercad that I don’t plan to discuss it in this post – maybe later. Unfortunately, it can also be very frustrating to discover that after many hours trying to incorporate some specific feature into your 3D design, ‘you can’t get there from here’ and you are left high and dry with nowhere to go. These are all free applications that purport to make it easy and intuitive to create 3D designs for 3D printing, and all three offer some amazing capabilities and features for free apps. In the process I have learned a LOT about AutoDesk’s Tinkercad, 123d Design, and MeshMixer applications. Since then I have spent countless hours with the printer and several different 3D CAD applications to design and instantiate various 3D designs. If you’re an educator looking for a classroom project built around Tinkercad, you might be interested in the book MakerBot in the Classroom: An Introduction to 3D Printing and Design.I started into the 3D Printing world just a few months ago with a PrintrBot Metal 3D printer, a strong commitment to learn, and and very little else.
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