27 Keys to Understanding Tinkercad

Read these Fundamentals and Save Gobs of Time

1. Whenever you add an object to your canvas, it automatically drops exactly down on the desktop — called the ‘workplane’ — not at some random height up in the air.
2. When you drag things around they automatically stick to the workplane… they don’t move vertically (also called the z axis). This, and the first key point can be unclear as you change your view and start experimenting with the movement tools.
3. You must watch at least 3 beginners’ Youtubes (10 minutes each) on the basics of the interface, before allowing yourself to feel frustrated.

We Interrupt Our Keys for an Introduction

I started right off with our first three tips, to get right into it, but an introduction might be of interest to some. I’ve learned about 30(?) graphics tools in a 40-year software career, and even wrote my own graphic editor back on an Atari 800. (Stop laughing, it’s still a state-of-the-art machine in some respects. I can recall that it highlighted the first erroneous character of syntax in code! So there.) Anyway, look at the blue highlight below from a Reddit post:

I had exactly the same misunderstanding and spent about 2 hours pounding on the interface before giving up and starting over with beginner Youtube tutorials. (I wanted to make a product prototype of moderate intricacy.) I tried a full-featured trial license of Rhino3D but was allergic to the user interface since my last 20 years in the work world were in UI design. I eventually had the owner of a makerspace make me a simple tetrahedron file; I then had a Fivrr freelancer in Pakistan (awesome results, by the way) make a more intricate model from that… and then started becoming self-sufficient with the user interface myself.

This list has one purpose: to save you the time and pain of figuring these things out by trial and error. As you may be noticing I’m using a thing called ‘the written word.’ It’s a quaint convention that preceded Youtube but I still like it, and find that it has its place. And note that I won’t be describing features and functions that I presume are common expectations from 2D tools.

Back to the List… (Pretend it picks up at ‘4’)

1. It does not appear that you can custom draw your own solid shapes in Tinkercad. In other words you can’t draw the multiple sides of a solid by dropping vertexes and connecting them. Instead, Tinkercad is entirely designed around using preexisting solids from the manufacturer or the community. Most likely, if they added this capability, it would compete too much with their paid tool. There is an object in Shape Library>Shapes Generators called “Extrusion” that has editable nodes in a small window, but it only allows movement and angle change, not full 3D editing.
2. Moving and reshaping objects on one dimension and rotating is done interactively in the workspace by selecting the object and using the controls that appear around the object.
3. The trickiest of those controls (for me) was the z-axis movement. It’s a little upward arrowhead. It has no X/Y counterpart because you can use the keyboard arrows or the mouse (holding [SHIFT] to constrain to orthogonal (?) movement).
4. Speaking of constraining, the rotation tool has a great subtlety that does have a clear UI appearance (I just missed it)… if you drag to rotate inside the guide circle, it constrains to angular detents; if you drag outside the circle it move in minute increments. Really nice.
5. Most shape creation in CAD seems to inherently based on subtracting space from other objects. In TC this is done by 1) creating a solid object; 2) creating a second object that you specify as a hole; 3) overlapping them as desired; 4) grouping them. Subtracting space will often require precise alignment …
6. The alignment tool and mirror tool in TC are awesome but different UI paradigm than my geezer mindset of menu selections. Both work in place in the workspace: you invoke them (mouse or L/M keys) and click the controls at the solid objects. Rotate and zoom the workspace to see and understand the various handles clearly.
7. To size things numerically, there are methods both in the canvas/workspace and in popup panels/property sheets (and more options, later).
8. To size numerically in the canvas, click an object and you’ll see the various dimensions. They are now interactive; click to enter new numbers; [TAB] to move to other axes/vertexes.
9. To size numerically on property sheets: when you insert objects from the shapes gallery, they have varying property sheets that appear when the objects are in context (selected).
10. To scale an object — without messing up its proportions/aspect ratio — hold [SHIFT] while dragging any of the interactive dimension control points.
11. To get to the next level of proficiency with positioning, especially with multiple objects, you must learn to use the ruler tool. Here’s a good video on it. It lets you place a numerical ‘origin’ at an object and then use the keyboard to specify relative distances for other objects… which is much quicker than dragging. For instance if you want to align 4 drill holes near the corners of a baseplate, the ruler makes it an efficient, precise job.
12. This video cleared up my bewilderment over the workplane tool. It shows that if you want to place objects on the face of an exiting object, click the workplane tool, then click the existing object; you’ll have a temporary workplane that becomes the plane on which new objects are situation when they’re dropped. And like the main workplane, you can press ‘D’ to drop things to your temporary workplane!
13. Make sure to experiment adding many shapes from the gallery just so you can examine their adjustable properties.
14. The ‘scribble’ object in the shape gallery appears to be a totally different class of object, one that is visually editable and opens its own editor. If you do abstract or graffiti or other art, go at it. (But it does not appear to do planar surface/vertex editing.)
15. To position things relative to one another, initially by dragging with the mouse, it is critical to adjust your point of view to see the space between the respective objects. By analogy, if you were instructing two car-parkers on a ferry to squeeze together until their bumpers touched, you would absolutely stand beside the bumpers, not behind one car. So…
16. You must become expert at using the little Front/Back/Top tool at the upper left of TC.
17. You must internalize that all of the tools on the left are the viewpoint tools and use them whenever you’re fussing to see what’s what.
18. There does not appear to be a list-wise enumeration of your objects, like a layers panel/palette/popup that you might be accustomed to in drawing applications. Calm down, everything will work out.
19. You must learn to use the ‘F’ key to fit either all objects or the selected objects to your screen.
20. Other hotkeys that might be right for you are ‘L’ to align and ‘h’ to turn something into a hole. It’s my belief that experts always seek out keyboard methods because 1) they’re more precise and immediate than the positional manner of the mouse, and 2) you always have a hand that is not busy with the mouse (ideally).
21. You must take a look at all of the https://www.tinkercad.com/help/3d-editor/shortcut-keys to make sure that you’re not missing something important to you.
22. Something important to me was the ‘d’ key to drop an object back to the workplane. I must have been unknowingly raising things away from the workplane.
23. Since TC has no history or layers list, it has very limited undo capability… particularly across file save actions. So I’ve found it necessary to save a version every time I’m about to use the Group function… typically to subtract spaces. To save a version you’ll have to copy all of your work to a new file with a new name. Alternatively, or in addition, you can create your own library of shapes in the Shapes Library>Your Creations panel.
24. You can snip out even complex pieces from other people’s models: a Youtube on making a simple box showed copying the articulating hinge from another model; shaving its attachments down to a pixel or two, and using it. Wow. I guess I thought stuff was more dependent on some inner code of structural integrity, but no… it’s just lines in space.
25. Learning to work from the gallery objects yields huge power. Another Youtube shows how quickly you can 1) create a box by just adjusting parameters of an existing model, and 2) create an egg-crate partition by using a grid model and making it negative (a hole). Really eye opening. Ask yourself what prior pieces should be able to start your project. It’s almost impossible to create something that someone else hasn’t at least approximated before.
26. Like all technology, you must ask Google every time you’re confused.

I found TC’s tutorials, judging by the first 10 ‘Nexts,’ to be painfully slow for an experienced user. I expect even the most intricate software to be self-guiding relative to the context of its users.