Tinkercad Scribble
Tinkercad. Every heard of it? It’s a great 3D printing tool that’s amazing to help students become accustomed to learning about 3D printing. Because Tinkercad is a web-based program, updates are common. One of its newest features is a tool called ‘Scribble.’ Now, Scribble is great. Students can essentially draw their own creations and the Scribble tool will “3D-ify” it.
Step 1: Finding the Tool
Here’s what Tinkercad looks like when you first start out. As you can see, in the lower right-hand section, under “Basic Shapes,” is the tool “Scribble.”
Step 2: How to Use It
Picking the Scribble tool is great. First, you have to click on the tool. Move your mouse over to the Workplane and “drop” the scribble tool on it. Once you’ve done this, it’ll change viewpoints and give you a new workplane. This is what it looks like.
Step 3: Know the Features
Now you’re ready to begin drawing! At the bottom of the new workplane, you’ll find some options. You have a redo and and undo button, a drawing tool, and eraser, a shape tool, and a shape tool eraser. For this, lets just stick to the drawing tool.
Step 4: Learn by Doing
You can be as creative as you want when it comes to drawing your print. I’m going to go for a smiley face just to get the logistics understood. To draw, all you have to do is click and drag in the direction you want. Once you’ve done this, the Preview box, in the upper right-hand section, will show what your drawing will look like when you return to the original Workplane.
Step 5: Are you Done?
If you’re happy with the way it looks, all you have to do is click the “Done” button and it will return to the original Workplane that we started with.
Keep in mind that you can aways change the dimensions of the smiley face to make it larger or thinner.
I highly recommend using the Scribble tool as a way to create design thinking and to get your students comfortable with using Tinkercad!
