Useful Tinkercad tips

This page is part of the 3Dsf.info review of Tinkercad.

Use the light bulb

Get used to hiding objects by using the light bulb tool. That lets you access other objects for grouping, moving, editing, etc. Then you can make your hidden objects reappear without affecting anything else.

I often select all (command-A/ctrl-A), then shift-click specific items I want to work on, then click the bulb. That hides everything except for the items I selected.

Use the colour of a hole touching a solid as a guide

Tinkercad draws holes as transparent grey objects with diagonal stripes. If a hole touches a solid the adjoining surfaces will be tinted a slightly blue-green grey colour. This indicates that if you group the hole and the solid together, then everything tinted blue-green will be bitten out by the hole.

You can use the arrow keys to move objects, at a superfine level of detail if your snap grid is set to 0, until they touch precisely for perfect object alignment. Thus switching one solid object to transparent temporarily can be a useful tool for ensuring two solid objects touch properly.

This is really important when printing. Knowing that two objects in a group are actually touching face to face could make the difference between an object that prints nicely, and another one that breaks in half at the join!

By switching an object to a hole you can see if your objects are correctly touching. The two objects on the left are not touching. The dark patch shows that the objects on the right are in contact.

Smart Duplicate 

A super handy feature of Tinkercad is the ability to duplicate key properties of an object, in addition to duplicating the object itself.

For example, let’s say you want a bunch of objects neatly spaced in a row. To do so just:

Note that the duplicate function will also duplicate certain other object attributes in addition to moving. You can rotate or resize the object as well.

With a bit of thought you can do some interesting stuff this way. For example, a spiral staircase stepping up and around can be done in moments with smart duplicate.

Rotate objects accurately

While Tinkercad lets you rotate items easily, and you can use the duplicate function above to rotate repeatedly, it can be fiddly getting a bunch of objects neatly rotated around a central point.

A simple way to do it is to make a large circle that’s bigger than the overall area of the items you want to rotate. Place that circle beneath the target object. Then select both the circle and the target object, and perform the duplicate function as above.

Because Tinkercad will perform the rotation on the largest object in a selected set or group, you can get a perfect circular rotation of your items. You then simply select the guide circles and delete them. 

Stack objects to improve quality

If you're dealing with a low-resolution object that can be rotated around its axis, such as a sphere or cylinder, you can increase its effective resolution. Basically create multiple copies of the object, rotated around itself by a set number of degrees (eg: 5° or 30°). These can be grouped for convenience.

The result is an object with more sides, making it higher resolution and more useful. If you make each object a different colour you can see how successfully smoothed your final thing is going to be.

The drawback is that multiple grouping levels slows things way the heck down. What I've done for cylinders instead is to import a high-resolution circle with many anchor points into Tinkercad, using SVG import, as below. This gives a much higher resolution, smooth-sided cylinder. Feel free to try my extruded circle high-resolution cylinder if you wish!

Also note: duplicating and rotating large object sometimes results in rounding errors, and your duplicated objects may change sizes very slightly, often assymetrically. It's worth double-checking them.

From left to right:

SVG imports give you more powerful options

You can make complex flat shapes in your favourite 2D vector art program, save the shape as an SVG, and import it into Tinkercad. An SVG is a flat (2D) file format which can include lines.

You can't do that much with the imported shape other than resize and extrude it in one direction. But that's something, and it lets you design more complex, albeit flat or stretched, shapes.

You can also make pretty high-resolution shapes this way. Before exporting your SVG, click on it and add additional points to every curve. In Illustrator this is Object > Path > Add Anchor Points. Then, when the object comes into Tinkercad it'll have much smoother curves.

Tinkercad also has adjustable options for fill mode and corner type when importing SVGs - click on the object and look at the popup info palette. You can also change display quality, which will smooth curves to a certain degree, though not as well as adding more points to a curve.

Designing proper gears that intermesh can be difficult. I used Gear Generator to create my gears, and exported them as SVGs. They needed some cleanup in Illustrator, removing superfluous anchor points and various guide objects, and then I brought them into Tinkercad. Engineering perfection!

Import STLs

You can also import previously made 3D models from other 3D programs (or from Tinkercad itself, if you really want) as STL files. Tinkercad unfortunately does reduce the complexity of the imported model, and in my experience if the STL is more than a couple megs in size it'll fail to load. But you can incorporate objects that you couldn't possibly create in Tinkercad to your favourite project with ease.

The ability to import STLs from other programs, though the STLs do get a bit broken up, makes something like this possible.

The back walls and the couch and table were by Doublefire Models and were imported as STLs. They were not made in Tinkercad. Many parts, such as the couch details could never have been – Tinkercad lacks the ability to make curved surfaces with recesses like that. But the crates and barrels and bunk and bunk wall were 100% Tinkercad.

Equal chamfers on a rectangle or whatever

If you add the edge chamfer or fillet feature, what Tinkercad somewhat confusingly calls a “radius,” (since they can be used for both curved fillets and flat chamfers) to a cube you'll get an edge which doesn't have 90° corners. If you set “Steps” to 1 you'll get a 45 degree flat surface, or chamfer. If you increase it to 20 you'll get a smoother curve that becomes a fillet.

However, if you stretch the cube out into a rectangular cuboid then your edge chamfers/fillets will be scaled assymmetrically. The ones on the long edges won't be the same as the ones on the short edges.

This is really unfortunate, and occurs because Tinkercad is calculating the chamfer/fillet on the overall object and not the edge itself.

One crude way around the problem is to duplicate your rectangular cuboid, then rescale each half into a cube. Group them and you've got your cuboid with equidistant chamfers. However, for something like a flat rounded rectangle object I'd just make your shape in a 2D program, import it as an SVG, and extrude it. Way easier.

Left: a cube with a curved “radius” applied.

Middle: the cube is stretched to a rectangular cuboid. This messes up the curvature of the fillet.

Right: One approach is to make the object three pieces, with cubes on the left and right. This gives you a proper fillet on each face.

Work in isometric projection mode for speed

Tinkercad has two projection options for displaying your project: perspective and isometric. Perspective mode tries to draw your 3D objects onto your 2D screen in a way that simulates the way an eye or camera sees the scene. The result is objects further away from the camera appear smaller in size, the way they do in real life. Isometric drawings, by contrast, are more like a visual plan in which the angle between any of the three axes is always 120°. (ie: all three are equal) This means that objects further away do not decrease in size.

The reason I recommend isometric is simply because it's much faster to redraw in the case of Tinkercad, especially if you have a complex project. You can easily switch back and forth.

The projection control button is the cube icon button below the + and – zoom buttons.

Some objects viewed in isometric (left) and perspective (right) modes.

Use different snap grid sizes

Because there are no layers or other useful organizational tools in Tinkercad, it can be difficult working with multiple assemblages of objects. There are a few things you can do with groups, and with hiding or showing objects with the light bulb. But those only take you so far, and it's often difficult editing a subgroup of parts within another part.

One workaround, albeit a somewhat limited one, is to move items precisely across the work surface. For example, you can select an object or group, use a shift-arrow keyboard command to move it quickly off to the side, assemble a series of changes to it, and then zip it back to where it used to be. By increasing the snap grid preference setting (lower right corner of the window) to 5, you can jump your object quickly with a minimum of keystrokes.

Tinkercad is excellent at moving objects precisely, and I've never seen rounding errors or anything causing objects to be moved back to the wrong place. The main challenge is keeping all the various object positions in your head while you work. The other issue is constantly having to change snap grid sizes - you might want to jump an object over with a snap grid of 5, switch back to a grid of 0 while you work on the object, and set it back to 5 so you can return the object to where it belongs.

Great precision

You can type in up to two decimal places when resizing or rotating. So if you want to size or rotate something super-precisely, you can.

While you might not need to type in 12.12mm or whatever, this level of precision makes Tinkercad much more useful and accurate for printing purposes. Being able to rotate to a very precise degree is critical – being limited to whole unit degrees would be terrible.

Learn how to use the cruise function

The magnet icon, confusingly called cruise, is absolutely key to being able to work on complex projects which contain objects tilted to various angles. Being able to switch your working plane to that of an object makes clean editing of such angled objects possible. Until the introduction of this feature in 2023 things got really messy if you tried to work on something with complex angles.

So I would spend some time learning how it works. There are two basic keyboard commands. Pressing “C” will allow you to click on an object (click the small circle that appears), then drag the circle over to another object to have the first object align its primary internal plane to the second object. It doesn't always work properly if you've rotated the first object, but it's better than nothing. Then be sure to press “W” and click on the second object to make your working plane the same as the face on the second object that you selected. When you're done press “W” and click on the open desktop somewhere to return the working plane to the default workspace.

This takes a bit of work to get used to, but once you get a hang of it you'll find yourself using it all the time to adjust complex object angles!

Okay, so you've got the blue cube and you want to put it onto the angled slope. That could be difficult to do well. Cruise makes it simpler.

First, press C. The small white circle appears on the object. Second, click that circle and drag it to the slope that you want it on, and the blue cube snaps to the surface. Note the pale green background that appears, indicating the temporary work surface.

By pressing W and selecting a surface you can make any object a new workplane. In the right you can see the yellow-orange grid (in place of the usual blue grid) indicating that this is the new temporary workplane that objects will move on.

Use cruise to change work surfaces

If you press “D” you can drop an item straight to the workplane. But if you've used the “W” command to change that plane you can drop objects to the new temporary workplane. This can be quite handy for stacking stuff or whatever.

Multicoloured objects

Normally when you group a bunch of objects together you'll end up with a single thing of one colour.

However, if you click on it and select the “Multicolor” option then your group will appear as if it weren't grouped, and each constituent object will be its own colour. Great for screenshots and so on.

Colour-code your objects

Often I'll experiment with a portion of a design and decide to reject a particular idea. When that happens I often keep the group of objects around, colour them brown, and stick them in the corner somewhere.

That way if I change my mind and decide that the group is still useful, I can go back and work on it. But the colour coding reminds me that it was a rejected idea.

I'll often colour-code a completed group of objects bright green, indicating that I'm happy with it.

You can also use the Note feature and tie notes to specific objects, but I find Notes a bit time-consuming and cumbersome, and only really attach Notes when I have a number or specific piece of text I want to remember for something.

Don’t click too fast when deselecting!

A common technique for isolating key objects is to select all (command-A or ctrl-A) objects and groups, and then shift-click to deselect specific items manually. You can then click the light bulb icon to hide everything that's still selected, leaving behind the items you selected to work on. This is a somewhat awkward workaround for the lack of layers or grouping tools that don't involve combining objects.

The key thing is that Tinkercad is a bit slow and takes a moment to think before it's ready to respond to the next shift-click to deselect. If you shift-click things too quickly it'll interpret your action as a double-click and open up the selected group.

So wait a moment until the number of objects in the upper right has decremented by one before shift-clicking the next group.

Copy and paste between projects

You can copy and paste objects between browser windows using the same browser on the same computer. The clipboard is usually preserved across the windows, letting you add objects from one project to another.

Open multiple windows for the same project

You can also open more than one window for the same project you're working on. This can be useful - maybe you have a zoomed-in view in one window, while you work elsewhere in the project. As you make changes in one window the other window will instantly update to follow. Light bulb views are not transferred across windows, though, so you can have a separate view of hidden objects in one window from the other.

Right-click an icon

Some of the page icons can be right-clicked (secondary click or ctrl-click) to bring up a “new browser” or “new tab” option.

For example, let's say you're editing a project, and want to take a look at the main Tinkercad dashboard. You could click on the Tinkercad icon in the upper left corner, but then you'd have to wait for the project to reload when you go back to it. If you right-click the icon and spawn a new window it will keep the existing project window open, and make a new window with the dashboard.

Similarly if you're in the dashboard view you can right-click the “Tinker this” button on a given project tile and spawn a new window or tab without losing the dashboard view.

Save multiple versions

Tinkercad autosaves constantly, and does a reasonable job of keeping your project up to date as you work on it. However, since it's a cloud-based app there can be problems saving your data. When this happens you can lose work.

Tinkercad also doesn't maintain a history of your work. There's undo functionality, but the undo record vanishes when you close a project or close the browser window.

For that reason I try to save versions of complex projects every day or two. I duplicate the project, and give it a new name that has the date on the end. This is tedious to do, and does mean your file browser gets filled up with tons and tons of projects.

However, doing so has saved my ass on many occasions. Not only does it give you a savepoint to recover from in the event of disaster, but it also lets you go back to a fork in the road, as it were, if you make a major change to something and decide later that things aren't working out.

For example, yesterday I had a load of objects selected and accidentally clicked “ungroup”, wrecking them all. I immediately hit undo, but rebuilding many complex groups is hard work, and Tinkercad crashed out and forced a browser reload. But not before saving the ungrouped version of the project! Fortunately I was able to reconstruct my model by going back to the previous day's project, so it only ended up costing me an hour of extra work, rather than days.

Experiment with browser zoom

You can increase the number of pixels displayed in your browser window by changing the zoom setting for the browser window. This lets you get a much higher resolution picture of your project, ideal for screenshots, etc.

However, if you find speed is adversely affected you can zoom out the other way.

The thing on the left is displayed with a browser zoomed out. The lines are low resolution and choppy.

The thing on the right is shown in the same browser, but with a zoomed in view. The lines are subtle and thin, and it looks great. But it's slower to redraw on the screen.

Speed loading by using “Create Shape”

If you have a really complicated grouped object that you don't anticipate altering, you can freeze it and make it an ungroupable object. You can store this object as a “your creation” custom shape.

This has three main advantages. First, you can reuse the same grouped object in different projects. It will be available to you via the “Your Creations” option. You can then simply click it and add it to another project.

Second, making a group like this effectively locks it permanently as a fully built grouped object. That means Tinkercad simply needs to load it, and doesn't have to recalculate and rebuild the group every time you open or reload a project. This can speed things up considerably.

Third, you can select an option to lock scaling on the object, which will prevent you from accidentally resizing the shape and messing things up.

This is all great stuff, but there is a significant drawback. This process will permanently create a grouped object. You cannot reverse it – there’s no way of ungrouping this shape ever again once it's a stored creation. So if you realize there's a problem with your shape you can't simply go in and edit it. It also means that each copy of a created shape is a fixed duplicate; there's no way to have a central object that can be edited, causing its copies to auto-update to the revised design.

Given this, it's important to keep a copy of your project containing the original ungrouped collection of objects. That way if you need to edit the components of the group you can still do so. You will then have to create a new shape and redeploy it in any projects that use it.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the initial process of making a new shape can be quite slow if the grouped object is really complex. If you see a generic cube icon in the “Your Creations” list, rather than a mini preview image of your completed shape, it means that Tinkercad hasn’t finished creating your new shape. Until it's finished it's possible you won't be able to select the item and add it to a project.

Try a trackpad

I find using a mouse with Tinkercad really frustrating, because it tends to zoom in and out when I'm simply moving the mouse around. However I rarely have this problem with a trackpad, though I do have to use my other hand to control movement options and so on. Anyway - try a different input device if you find that the one you're using now doesn't work for you.

Group objects into one group before exporting

Exporting to STL format is very slow, and frequently fails when you have a complex design. In fact, sometimes you have to group your project together into a single object for the export to succeed at all.

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:

contact@3dsf.info

Note: I am not Autodesk, and I'm afraid I'm not able to assist with problems or requests for help with Tinkercad.