Lesson video

Hello, everyone.

My name is Mr. Booth and I'm gonna be teaching you for your design and technology lesson for today.

Today, we are going to be manipulating 3D shapes in Tinkercad.

This means we are going to be designing our final eco-houses as part of our CAD structure's architecture unit.

Today's outcome, you are going to manipulate shapes in Tinkercad to meet a design specification, that design specification being all about designing an eco-house.

We have two keywords that I want you to look out for today.

The first one is features.

These are the special parts of an object that make interesting and useful.

And that's what you are going to be designing today for your eco-house.

All those extra bits that are gonna make it part of the eco-house design.

To do this, you're going to use the shapes library, something we haven't looked at yet.

This is a collection of shapes you can use to build and design 3D models with.

They are pre-prepared, you can search them and they will help you design even better creations.

Two learning cycles for today.

The first one is eco-house additional features.

So let's go and have a look at these.

Ken Yeang is of course our eco-architect that we have been looking at.

He's a very famous eco-architect and also an academic.

He's published many books including the "Dictionary of Ecodesign" back in 2010.

In this book, he says that an eco-building needs to have six features.

Can you remember any of them? Pause the video now.

Have a conversation with the person next to you and see if you can remember any of those six features.

So those six features are of course include nature in some way.

Isn't that beautiful? We all feel better when we are surrounded by nature.

So if you can include that as part of your eco-house design, that is brilliant.

Use natural energy, things like wind and sun.

If we use those, we are looking after our environment better and that again will form part of the eco-house.

Don't waste materials, use them wisely.

Think about those materials that you're gonna use.

Are there any that you could reuse or could they be sustainable? Have as little impact on nature as possible.

Designing and building houses or any structures has a massive impact on the environment where they are built.

So we need to reduce that as much as possible if we are gonna design eco-houses.

Use space smartly.

Space is really important, and I'm sure in your school, it's really important.

You'll never have enough space.

So we need to use the space we do have as wisely as possible.

And then finally, use water wisely.

In England, we're blessed, it rains a lot.

In a lot of parts of the world, it doesn't.

So we need to consider how we use water and how we can use it wisely and how we can recycle them.

Quick check for understanding.

How many features of an eco-building does Ken Yeang suggest there should be? Is it A, two, B, four, C, six, or D, eight? Pause the video now, have a go at this.

Come back to me when you've got your answer.

The answer is of course six, and I've listed them on there as well just to prove what they are.

But I'm sure you know them all off by heart by now, don't you? So architects such as Ken Yeang will often use computer-aided design to show their ideas.

Architects can show and explore special features in their designs, and we have been using Tinkercad, that brilliant 3D design application to help design our eco-houses, but we can also use it to do all our additional features of our house as well.

So let's all look at what Jacob's been doing.

So Jacob's created a 3D eco-house in Tinkercad.

He's made a complex shape in the main eco-house design, and I'm sure you can see all the different shapes that he's combined to be able to make that.

He's hollowed it out, he's added doors, he's added windows.

You can see we've got that wall thickness, so it looks realistic.

It looks like an actual architectural design.

Well done, Jacob.

And now what Jacob wants to do is consider those additional features that will meet some of the needs of the eco-building, what Ken Yeang suggests we need to do.

So first of all, nature.

So he says, well, my eco-house already has a grass roof.

It's got a green roof, which insects can use.

Materials, so Jacob has said that I'm gonna make it out of sustainable timber and all the aluminum is gonna be recycled aluminum.

That's a brilliant idea.

And then reducing that environmental impact.

Well, he's gonna say it's gonna be built on an old warehouse, it's not gonna be a green site.

He's gonna demolish the warehouse and build it on top of that where there already was a building.

So that's a fantastic way to satisfy Ken Yang's specification of an eco-house.

But now Jacob needs to consider how to use natural energy.

This is one of the things he hasn't considered yet.

So what I want you to do is pause the video here, have a think about it.

What could Jacob do to use natural energy for his eco-house? Pause the video, have a think about it, maybe a conversation with the person next to you.

Come back to me when you've got some ideas.

So I'm sure you thought of some fantastic ideas.

Let's see what Jacob thought of.

Well, Jacob's thought of actually he could add some solar panels to the roof.

He could add some natural ventilation or even some kind of underground heating system.

That's a great idea.

Jacob now needs to explore how to make solar panels in Tinkercad.

That's one of his ideas.

So let's look at how he's gonna create a solar panel.

It's actually far easier than you think.

So first of all, he's gonna use a box that's pretty simple.

He then scales it in all three dimensions.

And then what he does is he changes the color to make it look a little bit more like what a solar panel would look like.

That looks fantastic, doesn't it? Quick check for understanding.

What does Tinkercad call this cube shape? It doesn't call it a cube.

So what does it call it? Is it A, a box, B, a cuboid, C, a square, or D, a rectangle? Pause the video here, come back to me when you've got your answer.

The answer is of course, it calls it a box.

Slightly confusing.

Now Jacob needs to consider how to use space in his design.

So we want to use space wisely in all our designs.

We've talked about that before.

So I want you to have a think about how he could do that.

Pause the video now, have a think.

Come back to me when you've got some ideas.

Okay, so I'm sure you've got some brilliant ideas.

Let's see what Jacob's thought of.

So he said I could fill spaces outside with natural gardens and have space saving storage inside the house.

Let's all look at how he's gonna do this.

So Jacob's gonna explore how to use natural space.

So first of all, he's gonna use a half sphere.

And what he's gonna do is make it as flat as possible, but he still wants it to have a slight dome, 'cause he wants it to be like a garden that you can walk on top of.

He then scales it and changes the color of it to green to be like a natural garden.

And there you go, he's got his little grassed area.

Well done, Jacob.

The final consideration he needs is how to use water wisely.

So how to conserve water in his design.

And again, I want you to try and help Jacob out.

So pause the video, have a conversation with the person next to you or just come up with your own ideas.

Come back to me when you've got those.

So what did you think of? Well, what Jacob's thought of is he thought he could recreate some kind of rainwater storage system that flushes toilets and waters the gardens.

And that's a brilliant idea.

So let's see how he's gonna do that then.

So first of all, he's gonna use a cylinder.

He's then gonna scale it and change the color of it.

So it's more like some kind of, like, water butt.

And then he's gonna add some pipes to his design so that the water can flow into these water butts.

Quick check for understanding.

Which of these is a cylinder? Is it A, is it B, or is it C? Pause the video now, have a go at this.

Come back to me when you've got an answer.

It is, of course, A, well done.

So we're now onto your first task, and this is gonna be a brilliant task.

So the first thing you're going to do is you're gonna create a new 3D design.

Now you should already have your eco-house design.

I want you to copy and paste that entire design into a new design.

And then you're gonna add your additional features, so make sure you name it something sensible.

What I then want you to do is have a really good think, just like Jacob did, about how to include features of an eco-building.

Remember to use Ken Yeang's six specification points to help with that.

Once you've done that, I want you to then create the features in Tinkercad and then place them on your eco-house, and that will look absolutely fantastic.

So you're gonna get quite a bit of time to do this task.

Pause the video now, have a go at it.

Come back to me when you've completed it.

So let's see how Jacob got on with his.

We saw all the considerations that he had made using the specification points.

So let's see how he's added them to his eco-house.

Well, he's got his rain water storage system.

He's got his solar panels on his roof to collect that and sun's energy.

And he's also got his natural garden space that the entire house is sat on, which looks absolutely fantastic, well done, Jacob, and I'm sure yours looks brilliant as well.

We're now onto our second learning cycle, the Tinkercad shapes library.

Now Jacob has decided that he also wants to have some kind of wind farm as part of his design.

He wants to harness that wind energy to be able to power his eco-house.

But Jacob knows that actually designing a wind turbine in Tinkercad might be quite difficult.

It could be very difficult in fact.

Now the blades alone of a wind turbine are quite difficult to make, especially in Tinkercad.

Now Tinkercad has a fantastic shapes library that contains ready-made shapes.

Now these ready-made shapes are designed by Tinkercad.

They're also designed by other users, but they're there to make our life easier.

We can supplement these into our designs to make our designs even better.

It's still really important to create your own designs, but you can use the shapes library to help you out.

So if you click on basic shapes, you will see there's a little dropdown.

And what that does is that then gives you lots of other options for finding different models.

Now each dropdown provides a different set of prepared shapes.

These include basic shapes, which we've been working with up until now, vehicles and machines, structures and scenery, and even everyday objects.

Now don't get carried away and start dragging lots of shapes into your design, 'cause as you will see in a moment, that can actually cause problems to your computer.

There's also a really handy search option as well.

There are thousands of shapes in the shapes library, so sometimes it's quite difficult to find what you're looking for.

So what you can do is you can actually type the words you are looking for or the products you're looking for, the feature you are looking for into the search bar.

And what it will do is it will prepare you a list of all the things that match that search.

Sometimes searches won't work.

For example, in this case, I've searched for turbine.

I know it's a wind turbine I'm looking for, but there is nothing for a turbine.

But if I change the search, try and be clever about that by typing in wind or wind turbine, what it does is it comes up with some options that might help me design or help Jacob design his wind farm.

Quick check for understanding.

Why use prepared shapes from the Tinkercad shapes library? What's the reason for doing that? Why don't we just make everything ourselves? Is it A, they're colorful and fun to use? Is it B, they make your projects spin and rotate? Is it C, they don't need grouping or changing? Or is it D, they save time and help design realistic models? Pause the video now, have a go at this.

Come back to me when you've got your answer.

It is of course D, save time and help design realistic models, well done.

So Jacob has chosen from that shapes library from his search for wind.

He's chose to bring in the propeller shape from the library.

He's then added a cylinder to make the tower of the wind turbine.

He scaled and combined the shapes using rotate and all the different features that we've learned, all the different tools we've learned over the last few weeks to make a wind turbine.

And doesn't that look fantastic? And then what he does is he duplicates or copy and paste the shape and then added them to his design to make it look even more realistic.

And he's done that very quickly, far quicker than he could if he designed all that himself.

Now as we can see here, Laura got a little bit carried away.

She has duplicated or copy and pasted those wind turbines lots of times.

And then all of a sudden, she realized that her tablet stopped working or slowed down.

If you bring too many shapes in, your computer or your tablet just simply won't be able to cope with it.

And what will happen is it'll slow down, or even worse, it can sometimes crash.

I've had this happen to some pupils and it's very frustrating when they lose their work.

So just be careful with how many and how much complexity you're bringing into your design.

And you can see Laura says, it was much better when I took some of those complex shapes off and just had a few of those.

So just be careful.

So quick check for understanding.

Why would you not use too many shapes from the shapes library? Is it A, it makes the model look too good? Is it B, it can slow down the computer? Is it C, the colors will all be the same, or is it D, your design will disappear? Pause the video now, have a go at this.

Come back to me when you've got your answer.

It is of course it can slow down your computer or your tablet that you are using.

So we're now on to task B, your final task for this lesson.

I want you to use the shape library to find shapes that are helpful to your design.

Now you might be able to find some shapes that you can use straight away, or you might need to manipulate those shapes and arrange them to be able to use them for your design.

Don't forget to include the features of an eco-building from Ken Yeang's specification points.

So make sure you are still using that.

You get quite a bit of time to do this task.

So pause the video now, have a go at this.

Come back to me when you have completed your brilliant designs.

So let's see how Jacob got on.

So Jacob, as you can see, has added all sorts of other things to his design to make it look even more realistic.

He's add a little apple orchard, which is quite interesting.

So that's using nature widely.

He's got doors and windows.

You can see he's actually used transparent shapes to make it look like he's got windows.

Again, that's all just in the color toolbar.

He's got a pumpkin patch as well, which is quite interesting.

He's got some cacti on there.

And of course, he's got his wind turbines.

But he realized that with all these different aspects of his design, his computer started to slow down.

So he needed to remove something.

So quite sensibly, Jacob looked at this and he decided that the cacti actually didn't need to be there because they weren't part of the specification.

And now it looks much better and it also runs better as well.

I'm sure your designs also look fantastic.

So well done with that.

You've been absolutely brilliant.

And that's the end of today's lesson.

So let's have a super quick summary.

So we have used all that previous knowledge of 3D shape design in Tinkercad to apply and create additional features.

It's been vital to be able to do that.

We've built on the knowledge that we've learned before.

In Tinkercad, the shapes library has a range of prepared shapes that can be added and used in our designs.

It saves us time.

If too many shapes are added to the shape from the shapes library, it can reduce the performance of the workspace.

Our computers and our tablets will slow down, so always watch out for that, I'm sure you will.

You've been absolutely fantastic today.

I'm sure your designs and eco-houses are looking brilliant.

Well done, and I'll see you next time.

Goodbye.