Shape Toy Sorter 

CDA Category: 3d Design

Drakes Creek Middle School

Student Name: Jazzlyn Escobar

I created a shape toy sorter for young children where they put the shape in the correct hole to develop their fine motor skills. I also designed it to have a working lid so the shapes can be taken back out. I created this because my little sister when she was 4, had some trouble with shapes and I wished I had this toy to help her.  In addition, the doctors had a shape sorter toy when I was younger where we would wait to be called in.

For the lids, I got my inspiration from the sliding lid on my little sister's dominoes.

The software I used to create my project was Tinkercad for making the 3d design and Canva to capture the video of it.

I first started by logging into tinkercad and placing a red box onto the workplane. I resized the shape to 60 millimeters for the height, length, and width so I could work on the details. I added a hole box to the workplane and resized it so it could be a bit smaller than the 1st red box. I then selected both boxes and used the align tool at the top right corner, clicked all of the middle circles to align them perfectly, selected them again, and grouped them. 

I started to add shapes all over the box but realized I needed a way to open and close so I started from scratch again. 

I repeated the first 4 steps again. I got another hole box, balanced it on the 1st box, sunk it down with the black cone and grouped it. 

I got 1 box and resized it to be a long skinny rectangle and placed it to the side of the box but to the top of it to create space for the lid. 

I started to look for shapes to place on my box. I brought the ones I wanted to the work plane, duplicated them and made one of them a hole on the box. I used the black cone to raise them and my arrow key to place the shapes where I wanted them. I grouped the box and hole shapes together. I got another box and balanced it on the 1 side that didn’t have something over it and resized it so it can fit in the hole for the lid. 

My teacher then printed it on the school’s 3d printer. When I received it, the lid didn’t open and the shapes didn’t fit. I went back to the design and moved all of the shapes to a separate workplace. I got right back to work and resized the lid again since it was in the wall. I moved it away from the box, clicked the black cone and put in 0 where the box said the height. We printed it again and the lid kept collapsing. However, the shapes fit in the holes after making the box bigger with the printer. 

I went back again and ungrouped the main box from the upper boxes used so the lid doesn’t fall out, selected them with the shift key and my mouse, duplicated it and moved it down. I got the box from the circle and square side, duplicated it, and moved it to the right triangle and hexagon side. I now had the new bottom supports. I grouped everything except for the lid and printed it again. 

The 3d printer had some sort of error which was fixed by re-leveling it and controlling the speed after the 3rd time it did that. This time, it all worked. Except for the heart and star not being fully developed. So we added supports before slicing and printed it again. This time it came out beautifully and every shape was well developed throughout the box. 

I started on my recording by logging into canva and chose the video presentation. I clicked on Uploads and Record Talking Head. I selected the only screen option and went to the Tinkercad tab of the toy sorter where I have it named Box & Lid. I realized that I didn’t have my shapes so I went to the other file and copied and pasted the shapes to Box & Lid. I started recording, then clicked Save & Exit after I had a few issues with some of the recording before. After that, I added some video background to it since I didn’t want it to be plain. I went to Tinkercad and renamed it Shape Sorter Toy. 

Problems I encountered during this project was 1st, the lid not working and the shapes not fitting properly. 2nd, the lid kept collapsing, the 3rd, 4th, and 5th attempts were crooked. 3rd, the heart and star were not forming properly on the box and needed supports. 4th, the recording attempts either didn’t cover the bottom of the design or it was too chaotic. 5th, the Canva wouldn’t let me choose the anyone with link can view option and the video backgrounds kept on resisting to be shortened. Shew! But I persevered and was finally successful!

What I liked most about this project was the ability to create something from real life and make a design about it in Tinkercad where I could make it slightly different than usual. 

Here is the link, to view the 3d design video