Lesson video

Hi everyone, and welcome to your Design and technology lesson for today.

My name is Mr. Booth.

Thank you for joining me.

Today's lesson, we are gonna dive into the wonderful world of Tinkercad.

Tinkercad is a brilliant computer-aided design application that we use as a tool to help us design wonderful things.

And today, we are going to be starting your journey on designing your eco house as part of the CAD structures: architecture unit.

Today, you are gonna be looking at the user interface.

We've got to learn those basics before we can let you loose on all the wonderful things that Tinkercad can do.

So let's have a look at today's outcome.

By the end of today's lesson, I want you to navigate and use the menus on the Tinkercad user interface.

And what of course do I mean by the user interface? Well, this is the part of Tinkercad that you interact with, what you see on your screen.

Let's have a look at some of those keywords.

So today's keywords are Tinkercad, obviously, this is an online computer-aided design application that you can access in school and at home and on many different devices, as you'll see in this lesson.

The next keyword is workplane.

This is the area where objects and designs are created and edited.

It's like your piece of paper in your computer-aided design world.

And the final keyword for today is the ViewCube.

And this changes the viewpoint of the model, which is really important when we are using computer-aided design so you can see all around your model and see all the wonderful designs that you are creating.

So I want you to have a look out for those keywords in this lesson and see when they come up.

So let's get going.

We have three learning cycles today, and the first one is all about using Tinkercad on different devices.

Before we start on this, let's have a think about what I mean by devices.

So of course, using Tinkercad, we might be doing it on a laptop or possibly even a tablet, but can you think of any other device that you might have interacted with which you can put an application on and then use? Pause the video, have a little think about that, and come back to me when you've got an answer.

What did you think of? Well, I thought of one, of course a smartphone.

We put applications on it and then of course we interact with the smartphone to use those applications.

Now, we're not gonna use a smartphone for Tinkercad.

Lots of reasons behind that, but number one, it's a little bit too small.

But what we might be using is we might be using a laptop or a tablet or possibly even a PC, but what we have to understand is how to control Tinkercad using each of those.

So with a laptop, what we would probably use is the trackpad, that bit at the front that you put your finger on, and then what you can do is you can navigate around the screen.

With a tablet, you can use the touchscreen.

Very clever, it's got sensors within that screen so when you touch it, it knows where your finger is, and we can use Tinkercad in that way.

Or what you might be using is you might be using a mouse.

Now, that mouse might be plugged into a laptop or it might be plugged into a PC.

Either way, using any of these devices, I'm now gonna talk through how you interact with Tinkercad using each of these.

So the first thing we're gonna look at is the actions.

What are the actions we need to do to carry out the functions that we want Tinkercad to do? And actually for any of the devices I have mentioned, they're all very similar.

So let's take a look.

So the first one, we're gonna use some symbols for this to help with this, and the first one we're gonna call tap.

Now, what tap means is, of course, you're gonna touch the screen, the trackpad, or possibly even the mouse, but then you're gonna remove your finger.

So it's like a tap, and that's what you're gonna do.

And we call this tap.

So that's the first one I want you to remember.

The second one is tap and hold, very similar to tap, but rather than removing your finger, you're gonna keep your finger down.

And again, that's exactly the same on a trackpad, a screen, or a mouse.

And of course, we're gonna call this tap and hold.

If we have a look at a trackpad, then, so we're using a laptop.

If we imagine that and we've got a trackpad, how do we select, move, and zoom in on objects on the Tinkercad screen? Well, the first one, if we want to select anything on Tinkercad, we simply have to tap it.

So we place our finger on the trackpad, we move our cursor over to the shape that we want, and then we tap it.

The same as many applications that you will use.

To move a shape, what we're gonna do is we're gonna select that shape by tapping on it, but rather than removing our finger, we're gonna tap and hold.

And what that will do is pick that shape up and allow you to move it around the workplane.

Remember that keyword, that first keyword, that second keyword, sorry, that we had.

And then finally, zooming in and out.

Well, for this we have to use our thumb and our index finger.

And I'm sure you've done this on lots of applications where you view things like pictures.

So if you take your index finger and your thumb and you move them apart, what will happen is you will zoom in.

If you push them together, you will zoom out.

Like I said, I'm sure you've done this before on a smartphone when you've been looking at pictures.

Quick check for understanding.

Which action do you use to select a shape? Is it A, is it B, or is it C? What I also want you to do is try and remember what we call that.

Pause the video, have a go at this.

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

If you answered B, which is of course tap, well done.

You got it correct.

So we're still on our trackpad, on our laptop, but now we're gonna do two more functions, really important functions to be able to view your designs really well.

And these are called orbit and pan.

You might not have heard of these before.

So the first one is orbit.

Now, for this, we also need to use the keyboard.

So what we need to do is we need to look for the control button on the keyboard.

You'll find it in the bottom left-hand side of the keyboard.

And what we've gotta do is we've gotta tap and hold and press Control at the same time anywhere on your screen on Tinkercad, and what that will allow you to do is orbit around your design.

And what do I mean by orbit? Well, I want you to imagine how the moon orbits around the earth, and let's imagine that we are the moon and that our work is the earth, and what we want to do is view it from all sides, and it's just how the moon orbits around the earth.

So that's what we do when we orbit.

And the next one is pan.

Now, for pan we've gotta use two buttons on the keyboard.

Luckily, those buttons are really close to each other.

So you'll probably find that Shift is just above Control, again, in the bottom left-hand corner of your keyboard.

And if you hold those two down and then tap and hold anywhere on your Tinkercad screen, then what will happen is you'll be able to pan around your design.

And what that means is that means you can move along or up and down a design.

Really useful when you wanna design something on one side of the design and then move to the other side as well.

Now, what I want you to do now is if you're working on a laptop or a computer, I want you to pause the video now and see if you can find Control and Shift on your keyboard.

Why don't you pause the video, when you've done that, come back to me.

Brilliant.

Did you find those buttons? Excellent.

Those keys? Excellent, well done.

So we're now looking at a touchscreen.

Same functions, select, move, and zoom.

So let's see what the differences are.

You'll notice there's not much.

So the first one, again, is select.

If I want to select a shape using a touchscreen, I go to my shape and I tap on that and it will select the shape for me.

You will see it will highlight the shape.

So that's very similar to when we are using our trackpad.

To move, again, we're gonna tap on that shape, but we're gonna keep our finger down, so tap and hold, and that will then pick the shape up and we can then move that around our workplane anywhere we want.

And zoom in and out, exactly the same again, so we're gonna use our thumb and our index finger, and what we're gonna do is we are gonna move them apart to zoom in and then push 'em together to zoom out.

So let's now look at orbit and pan when using a touchscreen.

So to orbit, what we're gonna do is we're gonna tap and hold somewhere on the workplane.

Now, it's important to do this not on a shape because you do it on a shape, you're gonna select the shape.

So if you select somewhere else on your screen and you tap and hold, the computer will realize because you're using a touchscreen and what it'll do is it then orbit around your shape.

To pan, this is the first difference.

What we actually do is we tap and hold, but this time use two fingers.

And again, the touchscreen is very clever.

It's got sensors in there, and what it will do is it will sense you're using two fingers, and then what that will do is allow you, again, to pan around your design, left and right, up and down.

Another check.

If you moved your thumb and finger apart, what would you expect to happen? Is it A, the objects on the workplane would become selected? Is it B, you would zoom into the workplane? Or is it C, you would orbit around the workplane? Pause the video, have a go at this.

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

If you answered B, you would zoom into the workplane, you are correct.

Well done.

So now on a mouse.

Now, we're gonna take a little bit more time using a mouse.

A mouse is a really useful tool to use with Tinkercad because it has all those buttons that you need in one place and you have your other hand free to use the keyboard.

Now, most mice, most mice have three buttons.

You might have, like, a fancy gaming mice at home, which could have anything up to 15 buttons to carry out all the actions you want to do in your game.

But for most computer mice, they have three buttons, especially the ones that you might be using in school.

But they all have different functions, again, that we want to use with Tinkercad.

So first of all, let's look at those buttons.

We have the left button, which of course you can press, tap, tap and hold.

You have the right mouse button, exactly the same.

But then of course you have the middle button, and the middle button can of course be rolled forwards and backwards.

But you'll also probably find it's a button as well.

You can actually press it down.

A lot of people don't realize that.

So the left mouse button, what do we use that for in Tinkercad? I want you to have a think about that.

What might it be? It's the left mouse button, it's the one we use the most.

What do you think we're gonna use that for? Pause the video, have a little think about it.

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

Brilliant.

So I'm sure you've probably guessed that this is used for selecting but also for moving objects.

What do you think the middle button does? So think about it again.

Again, I want you to pause the video.

What might the middle button, you know what happens on a trackpad and a touchscreen, but what do you think this middle button might do? The graphic on the screen might give this away.

Pause the video, have a little think about this.

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

Brilliant.

Yes, of course, we use this to zoom in.

It's really useful.

That's almost what it's designed for.

Now, you might of course use it to go up and down a document, that might be quite easy too, you might have used it for that.

But what we also do is use it to zoom in, so to roll forwards and to roll backwards when we want to zoom, isn't that brilliant? And then we also have the right button.

Now, I'm not gonna ask you to guess what this one does, but this is all for our view.

So this is used to rotate.

So we use this to orbit when we want to orbit around our design by holding the right mouse button down.

So it's kind of that click and hold again.

And again, brilliant.

What we've got there, "It's like how the moon orbits around the earth." Now, there are different ways of using Tinkercad, but this lesson, the remainder of this lesson, will now focus on using the trackpad.

And the reason for that is because most schools use laptops and trackpads to interact with Tinkercad.

But remember if you're using a tablet or you're using a mouse with a computer, you still know what those functions do.

And again, you will learn how to use those as we go through the lesson.

Let's do our first task.

So our first task is to log into Tinkercad.

To log into Tinkercad, the first thing you need to do is you need to navigate to Tinkercad wherever you are.

That might be a quick Google search.

When you get there, you obviously need to click Students with a Class Code.

Type in your class code from your teacher, then click Join with Nickname, and enter the nickname you have been given.

Once you've done that, you should be logged in.

Your next task.

With Tinkercad open, I want you to practice using all the actions we have just talked about.

And then what I want you to do is label all the actions below to identify their function to see if you can remember what they all do.

Now, logging into Tinkercad can take quite a while just to make sure that you do it properly.

So once you've done that, have a go at task two.

So pause the video and come back to me when you've completed all that.

Brilliant, well done.

So you're now in Tinkercad.

You've now been playing around with all those different actions, and I'm sure you've labeled all those correctly.

So remember we've got the tap, which is of course select.

We've got the tap and hold, which helps you move in orbit using the trackpad.

We've got the zoom in when you move your fingers apart.

We've got the zoom out when you move them together.

And of course, by using two fingers, then what you can do is you can pan.

Isn't that brilliant? Well done.

You've done your first task.

So we're now on to our second learning cycle, navigating the Tinkercad workspace.

So the workspace is what is seen on screen.

You will have already have seen this when you logged into Tinkercad.

This is the Tinkercad workspace.

And what we're gonna be doing is we of course are gonna be designing lots of brilliant products in this workspace.

What you'll also find on the screen is the workplane.

And it's labeled really clearly for you there.

And if you remember from the keywords slide, I said the workplane is a little bit like your paper, the bit that you are gonna be designing on.

When you bring any shape into Tinkercad, when you drag it from the shapes library into the screen, you will find it will drop onto the workplane and then you can do whatever you want with it.

By clicking on the Tinkercad logo in the top left-hand corner, you will find it will take you back to your dashboard where all your designs are saved.

It's also a really good habit to get into, this is my first kind of hint to give you, my first tip to give you, is that at the end of designing your product, when you finish designing it, is click on the Tinkercad logo before you exit the application just to make sure everything is saved nice and neat.

But that's really useful to be able to click on that.

Next to that Tinkercad logo, you will find a file name.

Now, brilliantly Tinkercad give it a ridiculous name, something really silly, which you might have already noticed and had a little laugh with the person next to you.

And the reason for that is because pupils are famous for not labeling their files correctly.

So what we want you to do is we want you to label them sensibly because by the end of your Tinkercad journeys, when you finish designing all your designs, you're gonna have loads of designs in there.

So it's really important you label them all correctly.

And my second tip on Tinkercad is to do that soon as possible.

So as soon as you open Tinkercad, you'll know what you're designing, rename it so all your files are nicely named so you can get back to them and edit them really easy.

Check for understanding.

Which icon would you use to return to the Tinkercad dashboard where all your designs will be saved? Is it A, is it B, or is it C? Pause the video, have a go.

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

It is of course B.

Really obvious.

Well done.

Now, let's look at some of the tools that we have in our workspace.

So the tools to the right of the workplane allow users to change and add shapes.

We call these our designing tools.

And you'll see you have the basic shape tools all there, lots of them for you to use and manipulate to design your wonderful products.

You can drag shapes onto the workplane.

And remember, you know how to do this.

You just select and hold, so click and hold, and then drag it onto your workplane.

It will drop it on the workplane, and then you can start designing.

And remember, your workplane is like the paper you are designing on.

And remember that's one of our keywords.

On the left-hand side, you will notice we have the ViewCube.

And what we also have underneath the ViewCube are all our view tools.

And these are really important in design.

They often get missed out a little bit, but you have to be able to see what you are designing if you're gonna design something really well.

So the ViewCube at the top there, that changes the view around the workplane.

Do you remember when I talked about things like pan and orbit? Well, of course orbit, if you grab hold of that ViewCube by selecting it, then what you can do is you can orbit around again, it does the same function.

But the other brilliant thing about the ViewCube is you can actually click on the different sides and it will change your view of the workplane to match that.

So it's a really useful tool to have.

Sometimes you can get lost.

I don't mean lost in real life, I mean lost within the workspace.

If you zoom in too much or if you rotate around too much, you might suddenly not know where you are and feel like you're a little bit lost.

If that ever happens, click on that little house.

That is home, there is no place like home, so click on that and it'll reset the view back to what it originally was, and then of course you can start again.

So that's another really useful tip when using Tinkercad.

Check for understanding.

Now, what you might need to do for this one is you might need to actually check Tinkercad.

So you might need to pause the video for a little bit longer whilst you go and check that ViewCube that we've just talked about.

But what I want you to do is tell me, what are all the faces on the ViewCube called? Is it A, up, down, side 1, side 2, back, and bottom? Is it B, top, front, left, right, back, and bottom? Or is it C, plan, front, left, right, back, and base? Glad I don't have to read that again.

Pause the video, have a look, find your answer, come back to me when you've got that.

So hopefully you have a look and hopefully you answered B, which is of course all of those.

Well done.

So let's have a look at some more of those different view tools.

We have another really useful tool.

Now, this is another of my tips.

When you are designing, you want to zoom in as much as you possibly can so you can clearly see what you are doing.

There's absolutely no point working when you are zoomed out 'cause you simply won't be able to design properly and it'll be become very frustrating 'cause you'll select things that you don't need to select.

So what we need to do is we need to zoom right in on whatever we are designing to make sure we don't do that.

Now, there are a number of ways of doing it.

You could just zoom in by placing your cursor where you want to zoom in and then of course using the different functions of zoom.

But another way of doing it is using what we call fit all in view.

And if you click on that, what it will do is it will zoom in to your design so of course you can see it really clearly.

Below that we of course have zoom in and zoom out.

So you can see there's lots of ways of doing this.

And then the final one, which we're not gonna use today, this is switch to flat view.

Of course you can click it, but just make sure that you are staying in perspective view for today's lesson.

Another check.

Which icon would you reuse to return to the home view? This is a bit obvious, but if you need to go back into Tinkercad and check this, by all means do.

Pause the video, come back to me when you've got an answer.

It is of course A.

Looks like a little house.

That's our home view.

If you ever get lost within a view within Tinkercad, click on that.

It takes you the default view.

Well done.

So just an overview.

By using all these tools, the viewpoint in the workplane can be changed.

You can navigate around it really easily, and it's really important to try and get used to using all of those to make sure you become a fantastic computer-aided designer.

So now we're onto task B.

So with Tinkercad already open, you're gonna start a new design.

Now, to start a new design, there's a number of ways of doing it.

When you're in your dashboard, you can click on the left-hand side where it says create a new 3D design or you can click on the little blue button which says Create and then, again, select 3D design.

You can also do code blocks and circuits in Tinkercad, but we're not doing that in today's lesson, so start a 3D design.

Once you've done that, you are gonna place a shape on the workplane.

I don't really mind what shape it is, but keep it as one of the basic ones.

And then what I want you to do is I want you to try and view it from all the different angles by using each of those tools.

I would like you to use every single tool that we've talked about and have a really good look around your design.

So pause the video, have a go at this task, come back to me when you've done that.

Well done.

So here we have Jun and Sofia, and they've been using Tinkercad, and Jun has obviously said, "I logged into Tinkercad and could find the classroom with my work on." So that's fantastic.

Hopefully you have been able to do that.

And then of course Sofia, she was able to start a new 3D design in Tinkercad and move around the workspace, and that's absolutely fantastic.

So well done to both of you.

We're now on to our final learning cycle, producing basic designs.

So what we've done is we've learned about the workspace, we've learned about how to use all the different functions.

We're now actually gonna start designing something.

So to be able to use designs in Tinkercad, it's really important to become familiar and be able to identify all the basic shapes that we use in Tinkercad.

You've already been having a bit of a play of some of them, haven't you? You've already been bringing some of those in and using them.

But it's important that we know what they all are and also what they're called because then we can use the right terminology.

So, in the Tinkercad workspace, I want you to identify which shape is a wedge.

So again, for this one, you'll need Tinkercad open and you'll need to have a little look.

And you'll notice that if you hover over each of your shapes, it will tell you what it is.

And then what you can do is identify it.

So for this one, I want you to tell me, which of these three shapes is a wedge? Is it A, is it B, or is it C? Pause the video, have a go.

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

Of course you will have found it is B.

That is what is known as a wedge in Tinkercad.

Now, there are some basic shapes that we're not gonna use today.

And the reason for this is they're a little bit more complex, they need a little bit more explanation, but we will eventually come onto those.

So I want you to not use these ones, so don't use these ones.

The first one is holes.

We're not looking at holes today.

That is for a later date.

The other one is scribble as well.

Scribble actually takes you into a different design screen, which can be a bit confusing unless we have actually learned about it.

So don't use that either.

The other one is the sketch tool.

Again, we're not gonna use that today, so keep away from that one.

And then finally, text.

We're not gonna write any text on our workplane today, so don't use that either.

But you are free to use all the other ones.

And just make sure you do scroll down.

You'll find that some of the menus on the right-hand side are actually longer than what your screen can show.

So make sure you scroll down to the bottom to be able to use all the ones that you need.

So again, let's see if you can navigate this and just make sure you can see all those basic shapes.

So with Tinkercad open again, what I want you to do is identify which shape is a pyramid.

Pause the video, have a go, come back to me when you've got an answer.

So if you answered C, well done, that is a pyramid in Tinkercad.

Now, of course, to design products, we're gonna have to manipulate our shapes in different ways.

We can't just put a box on the screen and expect that to be our final design.

And the first thing I'm gonna learn is how to stack shapes, how to put one on top of another.

And it's really easy to do this.

So if you select a shape and drag it in and then select another shape and drag that onto the workplane, you will see that Tinkercad will almost know where you want to put it.

And wherever you hover it near, it will snap it to that place.

So if you place it on the workplane, it'll place it there.

But if you hover it over the top of your previous shape, it will realize you want to put it on top.

And when you let go, when you release your finger, it will drop it in that space.

The new shape has its own workplane as well.

And that's really useful, because you'll then be able to see where it's actually being dropped.

To change the height of a shape, so this is to move it up or down, you can click on the little black arrow above it.

So for example, if you bring a shape in and it's in the wrong place, you can always adjust it afterwards by selecting it and then using that little black arrow to lift it up and down.

And obviously to move the shape once you've dropped it, you just tap and hold it, it'll select it again, and then what you can do is you can move it around your screen.

So as you can see, what we're gonna be doing is we're gonna making a stacking tower, and lots of different stacking towers can be created.

You're gonna be as creative as you can, but the idea is that you put shapes one on top of the other to get used to the function of bringing more than one shape in.

So task C, I want you to design your own stacking tower.

There is a success criteria to this to make sure you are doing everything that we have asked.

To make a successful tower, you must not use holes, scribble, sketch, or text.

Remember, they are the basic shapes you're not using today.

I would like you to use all the other shapes from the basic library.

You can even use them more than once.

I want you to stack the shapes on top of one another.

Be creative in how you design this.

But I want you to make sure you use move, select, zoom, pan, and orbit, and any other tools we've talked about, whilst you are doing this task.

Pause the video, have a go at this.

Good luck.

I can't wait to see your designs.

So how did you get on? Well, hopefully you did absolutely brilliantly like Jun and Sofia did with their stacking towers.

So just to make sure, you did not use holes, scribble, sketch, or text, you used all the other shapes from the basic library, some of you might have used them more than once, you stacked all the shapes on top of one another, you used move, select, pan, and orbit, and you've got your brilliant design in front of you.

So can you remember now what I said at the beginning is a really useful tip to do once you've finished your design.

Have a little think about it, pause the video, come back to me when you think you've got an answer.

Brilliant, I bet you've got it.

Click on your Tinkercad logo and hopefully you've named your design stacking tower and you'll see that that will then appear in your dashboard.

Fantastic work.

Well done.

And that brings us to the end of our lesson.

So a quick summary of what you have learned today.

In Tinkercad, the workplanes are the design area that can be rotated using the ViewCube.

3D shapes can be moved on different views of Tinkercad.

They can be combined and altered in Tinkercad as well, such as stacking them and placing on top of each other.

And obviously, Tinkercad can be navigated using a mouse, a trackpad, or even a touchscreen.

Well done today.

You've been absolutely fantastic.

I'll see you next time.