Common Tinkercad Bugs and Errors
This page is part of the 3Dsf.info review of Tinkercad.
“Session lost or expired” and "Your session has expired. Please login again.”
These can randomly pop up, and appear to happen when your browser app has lost contact with the Autodesk servers for a period of time. Which can be quite a short period of time in the case of the browser app struggling with a complex or large project.
When it occurs you’ll have no recourse other than reloading the browser window in the first instance, and logging back in in the second instance. Anything you worked on will be lost to the last save point.
From what I can tell the primary causes of this problem are: a) large complex models, and b) problems on the Autodesk back end that runs the Tinkercad service. If it's the former you have to simplify your model. If it's the latter you have to wait.
This message will generate cries of anguish from any Tinkercad user.
“Node fails to load” and “Failed grouping shapes”
These mean that Tinkercad failed to construct a thing in your model, owing either to a complex groups of objects or the use of a shape generator. Sometimes if you wait 5, 10, 15 minutes, Tinkercad will figure out your model and successfully render it. Other times you can wait forever, your problematic object will be outlined in red, and will never load.
Errors of this type can be related to problems with Autodesk's servers as well. If you've got a project that loads fine, then fails later, it's worth trying to reload it the next day to see if the problem has been resolved.
If it happens frequently your only real recourse is to go in and simplify the project. Are there complex groups you could break down and regroup to reduce the number of nested groups? That sort of thing.
Sometimes that complex model you're working on loads fine and you can work on it. Other times, it stalls and never gets past the red line stage...
“Object exceeds the size limit”
This is a misleadingly phrased error message, because it implies that the object is physically too large for Tinkercad to handle. It actually means that part or all of your object is in the Wilderness, and is too far outside the Groupable Zone (see the “key points” section for information on Tinkercad's zones, and what I mean by Wilderness).
The confusing thing is that this Groupable Zone issue affects only grouping operations. If you try to make a group outside this area then your group may have a chunk cut off or it might vanish altogether. If this happens, undo immediately.
Making things extra confusing is that this line, between the Groupable Zone and the Wilderness outside it, is almost invisible. It’s only visible if an object straddles it, and then you can only see a darkening of part of the object.
At the very minimum Autodesk should change the error message to read “Objects are located outside the area where objects can be grouped” or something like that, with a link to a blog entry describing how the Groupable Zone works. The perimeter of the Groupable Zone should be marked with a (user hideable) faint red dotted line or something like that. Groups should not vanish when in the Wilderness! Tinkercad should prevent users from attempting to do so.
That said, the best overall solution would be to eliminate the Groupable Zone entirely, and make the entire visible workspace fully groupable.
“Sorry, we were not able to send your design to Autodesk Fusion at this time. Please try again.”
This is the problem described in the drawbacks section – exporting a project to Fusion 360 does not work if you have shape generator objects, imported SVGs, or complex groups. (ie: basically any useful project)
“Some elements were removed”
This error is actually somewhat meaningful, since it continues “The imported SVG contained some elements that Tinkercad does not support. The conversion to 3D may have unexpected results.”
Basically that probably means you've tried to import an SVG file that contains a bitmap in addition to line art. Tinkercad can only import the line (vector) art from an SVG file. It can't convert any JPEG or PNG or TIFF image or whatever might also be embedded in the SVG.
I often import photos or drawings and trace them out in Illustrator. I save as SVG, and import. When that happens I get this error, which is safe to ignore in this case.
“Error importing xyz.svg”
Quite often an import of an SVG file will fail the first time with this error message. Try again immediately and it works. Why? Who knows?
As for STL files, I find Tinkercad can't import anything larger than a couple MB in size, though Tinkercad says it can import files up to 25 MB in size. This problem has occured for me using different browsers on different Macs. This error will then crop up.
“Failed to publish part”
If you attempt to make a complex set of objects (maybe many grouping levels or whatever) into a “Your Creation” shape, this error message can come up. Your group is too complicated to be rendered as a single uneditable object, and will probably need to be simplified.
“Leave site?”
If a browser window pops up, perhaps with the browser’s icon in it, when you click the Tinkercad icon in the upper left corner of the Tinkercad window, it means that Tinkercad has not successfully saved your last change. If you go ahead and leave the editing page, you'll lose any changes you made to your project since the last time it saved internally.
The problem is you won't know what the cause is. Perhaps there was a temporary communications glitch, in which case if you wait a couple minutes and try again then it should have saved changes successfully, and you'll be fine. But other times things will fail permanently and you'll have no recourse other than to close the browser window or click on the Tinkercad icon and agree to losing data.
You should only lose data to the last save point – it shouldn't lose anything more than that.
Grouped items disappear
As above – if your objects, or some of them, fall outside the Groupable Zone, then your objects can simply disappear altogether without warning when you try to group them. If this happens to you, undo (command-Z or control-Z) immediately.
The fix for this would be to get rid of the Groupable Zone, and make the entire visible working area groupable.
Grouping errors – the appearance of mystery holes.
From time to time a complex group can fail in a strange way. Basically a small hole, somehow related to the set of objects that make up the group, will appear in the final group. Even though there is nothing that could possibly make the hole in terms of its constituent objects. You ungroup the components, and there’s nothing there that could make a hole. Sometimes spurious little objects will appear outside the main group once the group is complete.
It must be some sort of mathematical error or a problem with the grouping algorithm, though it doesn't happen very frequently and is impossible to predict. The holes are usually partly rectangular with angled sides for some reason. And I don’t mean they’re Tinkercad holes in the sense of them being transparent grey objects – I mean holes in the sense that there’s a full-on gap in the finished group.
See the mysterious broken-up hole circled in red? That shouldn't be there. If you ungroup that group you'll end up with how it should be - the green circled one. Group it all again, and the mysterious hole reappears!
Ungrouped projects can fail exports to STL
If you've got a complex set of objects, it's really common for Tinkercad to fail an export. A more reliable way of exporting is to get things grouped into a single group, and then export that solitary group. Your chances of a successful export will go up. But sadly some complex groups simply can't be exported to STL, which is a real pain. If possible you could segment the group into pieces and export one by one.
Weird no-response bug
I can't figure out the exact trigger, but there’s a bug in Tinkercad that sometimes prevents it from responding to anything.
At some random point in time nothing works in Tinkercad except moving around and viewing the model. You can't touch any object. No shape palette tools work. Nothing works except clicking the Tinkercad logo to go back to your dashboard view.
The problem with this, other than the obvious waste of time, is that it typically means you lose all your work until the last save, and that last save won't include any complex operations you've done recently.
Objects mirror-flip when resizing
If you click on a side handle to resize an object, and do so with the shift key down, the object will suddenly mirror-flip 180° horizontally, using a vertical axis that's the side handle on the opposite side from where you dragged.
This bug has been around for years, and does not occur if you resize by dragging a corner handle, or if you drag a side handle without the shift key down to constrain both dimensions.
Object resize handles vanish
You can't always see all the control handles from a flat head-on view - you often need to change to slightly up or down.
Vertical resize handle vanishes
The vertical extend handle often doesn't appear. You need to change the angle of view and the vertical handle will reappear.
Rotate handles jump
Quite often you'll click on a rotate handle and suddenly the handle leaps to another location on the object.
Error messages vanish quickly
When error messages appear on-screen, they only stay there for a few seconds at most before disappearing. If you're waiting for some long operation to take place, look away for a moment, then look back, you'll see nothing. Just that your operation seems to have stopped, and you have no idea why.
Error messages related to operational failures should stay on screen until the user clicks to acknowledge. It's not like a loading message or something else transient.
To get the error messages in the screenshot at the top of this page I had to sit and wait like a hawk, ready to stab the “take a screenshot” keys.
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.