Lesson video

Hi there, everyone, my name is Mr. Booth, and welcome to your design and technology lesson for today.

Thank you very much for joining me.

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

Tinkercad is a fantastic computer-aided design application that you can use as a tool on your design journeys.

And today, we're gonna do some basic modeling and learn about the basic functions of Tinkercad.

Now that's really important for you to learn before you move on to more complex modeling.

This lesson is part of our Prototypes with mechanisms: Robotics and automation unit.

Let's have a look at today's outcome.

By the end of today's lesson, I want you to be able to interact with and navigate the Tinkercad workspace to model basic designs.

Let's have a look at our keywords for today.

We have four of those.

The first one is workspace.

This is what is seen and interacted with on the screen when using computer-aided design.

It's where you will see all your designs and where you have all your tools as well.

We also have a workplane.

You'll see that within your workspace and this is the space used for designing on when using computer-aided design.

We then have pan.

This is where we move our view from left to right or up and down.

And we have another of our view tools called orbit, which is rotating the view in three dimensions, and you are gonna use both of those today We have three learning cycles today.

The first one is all about navigating the workspace, so let's get going.

Computer-aided design, or we often use the acronym CAD, is the use of computer applications to model three-dimensional designs.

The vast majority of products that we buy today will have been designed using CAD.

Unless you bought something that has been crafted by hand, it probably at some point in its life was on a screen as a computer-aided design model.

Now, CAD can be used for all sorts of things.

We use it to model and test ideas.

Designs can be easily edited and even we can simulate how they will work once manufactured, and that's a brilliant, powerful thing that Tinkercad can also do.

Now, Tinkercad is a CAD application that can be accessed for free and online.

It's brilliant, you don't need to download it, it's web based and it can be used on phones, tablets, laptops, and personal computers.

Quick check for understanding.

What does CAD stand for? Is it A: computer-aided design? B: computer and design? Or C: computer applied design? Pause the video now, have a go at this and come back to me when you've got your answer.

It is, of course, A: computer-aided design.

It's a tool.

We are using it to aid us in our design journeys.

So this is a 3D design workspace in Tinkercad.

This is what it looks like.

The workspace is what is seen on the screen and as you can see, you can see all sorts of different tools there for you to use.

For example, on the left hand side, we have some view tools, we have some design tools and we even have some tools across the top, which we'll go into in a moment.

Now to interact with the workspace, we need to use a keyboard and a mouse.

Now you can use touchscreens and you can just use your finger for that and you can even use a track pad if you're using a laptop, but we are gonna focus on using a mouse and a keyboard connected to a personal computer.

Now within the workspace there are lots of different features for you to use.

For example, we have the Tinkercad logo in the top corner.

That's not just a logo, that's actually a button for you to press to return to your dashboard and it's a really good habit to get into is when you finished your designing session, is to click that to go back to your dashboard to make sure everything has saved.

Now it should save automatically because it's a web based application, but it's always a good habit to click on that at the end of your session.

We have the edit tools running across the top and again, we'll get to play around with those.

Down the left hand side we have the view tools, things like zoom in and zoom out.

We have the workplane, which, of course, you know all about already.

And of course we have the design tools on the right hand side and that is what we use to be able to design the products that we're gonna be using in today's lesson.

Now, if you don't know what a tool does, Tinkercad has a fantastic feature where if you hover your cursor over that tool, it tells you what its function is.

For example, if I hover over that little image of a house, what it'll do is, it'll say it's the home view.

What that means is if I ever get lost in Tinkercad, that means if I zoom in too far or I've rotated my view and I'm not sure where I am, if I click on that home view, it will take me back to the default view, which is zoomed out where you can see the whole workplane.

It's also really useful to use that, to use the home view, is because if you want to zoom out really quickly so you can start work on something else, that's probably the fastest way of doing it.

But if you're unsure, hover your cursor over a tool and it'll tell you what it does.

Also we have on the view tools is we have zoom in and out.

So if I hover my cursor over the plus icon, yes, you guessed it, it will tell you that it is zoom in, and if I click that it will zoom in on my workplane.

Another check for understanding.

I want you to select the image of the workplane from all these images below.

Is it image A, is it image B, or is it image C? Pause the video now, have a go at this, come back to me when you've got your answer.

It is, of course, image B.

That is your workplane, that is the area that you design on when producing models.

We're now gonna have a look at the computer mouse.

Probably one of the most important tools you will learn to use with Tinkercad.

You can imagine if you are a gamer, you need to be able to use all the functions on the mice that you use and also the keyboards.

And it's exactly the same with computer-aided design.

So let's have a look at some of the mouse functions.

So the first one, we have three buttons.

The first button is the left button and that can be pressed.

We also have the right button which can also be pressed.

And then finally the middle scroll wheel, which can be rolled forwards and backwards, but believe it or not, it can also be pressed.

It is actually a button.

If you didn't know that, maybe have a go at that now.

Pause the video now, have a look at your mouse and just see if you can press that middle scroll wheel down just like a button.

And there you go, and that gives you additional functionality with your mouse.

Let's have a closer look at what each of these buttons do in Tinkercad.

What is their function? So we have the left mouse button, and what we can do for that is we can move and select.

If I want to select a shape, I can click it.

If I want to move a shape, I click and hold that button and then I can move shapes wherever I want.

We have the middle button and this can be rolled, or scrolled as we sometimes call it.

And if we roll it forwards, believe it or not, we zoom in.

If we roll it backwards, we zoom out.

It's as simple as that.

Now one thing when you are zooming that's really important to note is it will zoom wherever your cursor is pointed.

So just make sure your cursor is pointed where you want to zoom in when you're zooming in.

We have a right mouse button.

Now, the right mouse button we call orbit.

This is used to orbit around your shape by clicking and holding it down.

And when I mean orbit, imagine that we are the moon and the work we are working on, our model is the Earth.

And when we orbit around it, we do exactly what the moon does around the Earth.

It's as simple as that and that allows you to get a really good view when you are modeling of your design from all sides.

We also have the right button + shift.

Now shift on your keyboard, you will find in the bottom left hand corner.

Now if you hold the right button down and press shift, what that will allow you to do is pan along the workplane, so we can pan up and down.

We can also pan left and right as well.

So that's another really useful tool.

Another check for understanding.

What happens when the scroll wheel is rolled forwards? Is it A: you zoom in? B: you zoom out? Or C: you orbit around your model? Pause the video now, have a go at this.

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

It is, of course, you zoom in.

Well done.

Here's your first task, Task A.

I would like you to log into Tinkercad.

I then want you to use your computer mouse to navigate around the workspace.

I want you to try the following.

So you might wanna put a shape onto the workplane.

I'm sure you can figure out how to do that.

I want you to zoom in and out using all the different ways that I've shown you, the mouse and also the view tools.

I want you to orbit and pan around the shape on the screen.

I want you to hover over each of the tools to see what their function is, and then finally, click the Tinkercad logo to return to the starting point.

Pause the video now, have a go at this.

Come back to me when you've done all that.

So how did you get on? Well, hopefully you tried out the following: zoomed in and out using the mouse and maybe even the menus on the left hand side.

Orbited and panned around your design.

Hover over the tools to see what all their functions were and then finally clicked on the Tinkercad logo to return to your dashboard.

Well done.

We're now onto our second learning cycle, using the mouse.

We need to be able to use the mouse correctly if we are going to be brilliant designers, which I'm sure you will be.

We use the left mouse button to select shapes and drag them onto the workplane and also move them.

Let's have a closer look at how we do that.

So first of all, we need to select the shape by clicking on the shape we want in the menus.

We then drag the shape onto the workplane and you'll find it's connected to the end of your cursor.

You'll also see it's a ghosted out shape, it's translucent, which of course means it's not been placed yet.

You then click where you want to place the shape and it will turn into a solid.

And there you go.

You've got your placed shape.

A quick check for understanding.

If you click and hold the right hand mouse button down, it will.

A: zoom in and out of the workplane? B: allow you to orbit around the workplane? Or C: select a shape? Pause the video now, have a go at this.

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

It is, of course, orbit.

If you hold down that right mouse button, you will orbit around your design, just like how the moon orbits around the Earth.

Well done.

Now, of course you can place more than one shape onto the workplane by dragging more shapes from the library and this is really easy to do.

First of all, you select your second shape in the library and then once again click on it to select it and then drag it onto the first one.

When you hover over the first shape, it will start to select different faces depending on where your cursor is, and all you need to do is determine the best placement.

As you can see, as always, it will be ghosted out until you click it to place it.

It will then become a solid color which tells you it's now been placed correctly.

It's best practice in computer-aided design to be zoomed in as much as possible.

There is no point in working on a design when you are zoomed all the way out and you can't see what you're doing.

What will also happen is you'll start to select things you don't mean to select and that can become very frustrating.

So what you want to do is zoom in and this is really easy to do.

What you can do is you click on the workplane to deselect any shapes and then just aim the cursor where you want to zoom in and then roll the scroll wheel forwards and you will magically zoom in.

There are some other ways you can do this as well.

There is a menu on the left hand side called fit all.

You click on that and it will zoom in on the shape you are working on.

But the zoom function on the mouse is really useful, so make sure you're using that lots.

We're now onto your second task, Task B.

Using only basic shapes from the basic shapes library, I would like you to stack as many of those shapes on top of each other as you can.

I would like you to avoid using the sketch tool.

That's a little bit too complicated for this task and it might make it go wrong.

I would also like you to use all the functions of the mouse.

So I want you to select, I want you to move shapes.

I want you to zoom in and out.

I want you to orbit and I want you to pan.

Now the start of your tower could look like this where we have our first shape and then our second shape.

Pause the video now, have a go at this task and come back to me when you've built your towers.

So how did you get on? I'm sure you've got some fantastic structures with all those different shapes used and you used all the functions of the mouse.

They might look a little something like this.

Well done.

Now on to the last learning cycle, basic 3D modeling.

So to create models in Tinkercad, we need to be able to make them the correct size.

That is essential CAD modeling.

Since models can be 3D printed and laser cut, designing to the correct dimensions is very important.

There's no point designing something that you are going to 3D print as a prototype and then finding out you've designed it way too big to fit on the bed of your 3D printer.

Now after placing a shape on the workplane, a black cone will appear.

Now this will allow you to move the shape off the workplane and that's a really useful tool if you want to lift it off the workplane.

You will also notice when you select a shape or you've just dragged a shape and put it on the workplane is black and white cubes appear all around the edge of it.

We call these handles and these are used to resize the shape or scale the shape as we call it.

Quick check for understanding.

The black and white cubes that are used to resize the shape that you see appear whenever you select a shape are called what? Is it A: handles, B: hands, or C: corners? Pause the video now, have a go at this.

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

It is, of course, handles.

We call them handles 'cause we almost grab hold of them and then use them to manipulate the size of our shape.

In addition to dragging the handles to resize your shape, you can even enter precise measurements.

Again, if you click on your shape, make sure it's selected, you can tell a shape is selected because you get that blue glow around the edge of it.

You'll also see all those handles suddenly appear.

What you can then do is you can also see, if you click on one of those handles, some dimensions appear.

Now remember, in Tinkercad the default is millimeters, so those dimensions will always be in millimeters.

But what you can do is you can click on that number and you can enter a new number of your choice.

You can see them there.

So I've clicked on the corner handle of this pyramid and then I'm gonna enter my new dimension there.

You can even do it for the height.

So if I click on the top handle at the top of my shape there, what will happen is I'll get the height of my shape, and once again, it's 20 millimeters.

I can click on that number and then enter a new number, which will be the number that I want my shape to be.

Now, once a shape is placed on the workplane, a dialogue box will also appear next to the basic shapes library.

Now what this does is gives you more control over the shape, and each shape might have a different dialogue box and it's well worth having a play around with these to see what they all do.

But for example, we've got our pyramid there.

So I've got my pyramid on my workplane and I've got the dialogue box for my pyramid as opened.

Now by moving the sides slider, what I can do with my pyramid is actually increase the number of sides it has.

So for example, it might start with four 'cause that's the default, but I could increase that up to 12 if I so wished.

And you can do this for a number of different shapes.

What you'll also find as well is you'll find you'll have that circle which says solid, and I click on that, I can change the color of my shape.

There are lots of preset colors.

You can create your own custom colors, but you can also add transparency to your design to give it the effect that it's got opacity so you can see through it.

Quick check for understanding.

What happens when you drag the black cone on top of the shape after placing a shape on the workplane? Is it A: the shape gets taller? B: the shape rotates? Or C: the shape moves off the workplane? Pause the video now, have a go at this.

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

It is, of course, the shape moves off the workplane, and you'll see a little shadow appear under the shape.

That's quite useful to know if you've moved it off the workplane.

Being able to precisely move a shape is important when modeling CAD as well.

We don't just want to be able to drag our shapes around without knowing how far we are dragging those.

And there are lots of ways you can do this.

First of all, if you left click on any shape and drag your mouse, you will see it move across the workplane and it will give you the dimensions that you have moved.

In this case, you can see my dimensions on the screen of where one corner has moved to the other corner.

What you can also do as well is use the black cone to lift a shape off and you will even get dimensions when you are doing that.

Now, similar to when you are dimensioning a shape to make it bigger or smaller, you can again click on the dimensions when you drag your shape to move them a specific distance.

But what you can also do is use the arrow keys on the keyboard.

Now again, Tinkercad's grid and the snap grid defaults to one millimeter.

So if I select a shape and then use the arrow keys on the keyboard, it will nudge the shape in one millimeter increments and that's really useful for lining shapes up.

When modeling using Tinkercad or any CAD application, you are going to need to rotate your shapes.

It's very doubtful you are gonna be able to create complex designs without doing this.

Now we can rotate shapes in Tinkercad around all three axes, all three dimensions, and our three axes are X, Y, and Z.

Let's have a look at those axes actually on the workplane.

So here we have a star shape.

We have our X axes running across us, so left to right, our Y is front to back, and our Z is, of course, up and down.

When we select a shape, we get our little rotation handles which correspond to each of those axes, and then we can rotate around those depending on which angle we wanna rotate to.

By clicking on one of those rotation handles, a little protractor will appear.

Now if you click on your protractor and you start rotating around the axes, it will rotate your shape in 22.

5 degree increments.

But if you move your cursor a little bit further away from your shape, it'll suddenly snap to one degree increments, which gives you that little bit more control when rotating shapes.

We're now onto your final task, Task C.

What I would like you to do first is open the "robot rotate task" by following this link.

So once again, you need to be logged into Tinkercad.

Then what you need to do is, in your search bar is type in that link.

You then need to click copy and Tinker to open it.

It will then make a copy of it into your dashboard that you can then edit.

I want you to rotate each robot head so they're all resting on the workplane and facing in the same direction.

Shall we make them all face the front? That sounds sensible, doesn't it? I then want you to space the robots equally apart on the workplane, using all the tools which we've talked about in this lesson.

Pause the video now, have a go at this.

Come back to me when all your robots are looking at us and are spaced out evenly.

So how did you get on? Well, I'm sure yours looks similar to mine.

So we've got all those robots facing the same direction spaced nice and easily.

And in order to do that you will have had to use all the tools that we've used today.

So that brings us to the end of this lesson.

You've all been absolutely brilliant and you've got lots of new skills to be able to use in computer-aided design with Tinkercad.

Let's have a quick summary.

Computer-aided design, CAD, is the use of computer applications to model three-dimensional designs.

Tinkercad is a CAD application that can be accessed for free online, on multiple devices.

The workspace is what is seen and interacted with on the screen when using computer-aided design, and we interact with that using the mouse and the keyboard.

The workplane is the space used for designing on when using computer-aided design.

And then finally, there are usually three buttons on the mouse that can be used to interact with Tinkercad.

Well done today.

I look forward to seeing you all next time.

Goodbye.