The 3Dsf.info
Tinkercad Review
Tinkercad is a browser-based computer-aided design (CAD) program aimed at children's education and secondarily the hobbyist market. Originally created by a startup in 2011, it has been a free service run by US CAD giant Autodesk (makers of AutoCAD) since 2013.
What does Tinkercad do?
Tinkercad is an interesting way to introduce novices, particularly kids, to CAD (computer-aided design) and its basic concepts. It’s an ultra-easy 3D editing tool that works inside an ordinary web browser. It can then export files for 3D printing. Tinkercad is currently free for anyone to use at no cost, and is commonly used by hobbyists who need to knock out quick and dirty 3D designs for printing.
It may be hard to believe, but both designs shown here were done using Tinkercad.
One just took, well, a bit more time to make than the other!
The program is designed around the simple manipulation of basic objects. You can put various primitive 3D shapes – cubes, spheres, pyramids, etc – onto an imaginary workspace plane, and move them around with your mouse or trackpad.
Grouping two or more objects transforms the group into a single non-editable shape. (Non-editable until you ungroup it, that is; the process is reversible) This allows you to construct more complex objects, just by melding simple objects together. 3D software like this is known as constructive solid geometry.
As you might imagine, while in-browser support is kind of cool it's also not perhaps the most advanced CAD program ever made by humanity. Tinkercad has a lot of drawbacks from the point of view of a serious designer. Like its wooden namesake Tinkertoy, Tinkercad is kind of a toy made for educational purposes. Having said that, I have managed to produce some decent results out of it – it just takes some extra effort.
So here are some frank comments about the software, from the point of view of a reasonably advanced adult hobbyist. I’m not involved in education, so I can’t really offer any opinions about Tinkercad’s usefulness in a classroom. It's just a handy tool for quick and easy projects. I also review just the basic 3D modelling capabilities – I don't go into the circuits feature, physics models, and so on.
Because this is all very long, I’ve broken the comments up into various sections. Click the links below for more delightful information.
COPYRIGHT
This text was written entirely by and for 3Dsf.info. Feel free to make copies for your own use, but I ask that you not repost it for download elsewhere. The reason is I'm updating these pages all the time for accuracy and development purposes. So the most up to date page should always be available at 3Dsf.info!
CONTACT
If you have any corrections or comments, feel free to drop a line:
Note: I am not Autodesk, and I'm afraid I'm not able to assist with problems or requests for help with Tinkercad.