How to Use Tinkercad for 3D Printing (Step-by-Step Beginner’s Guide)

Want to design your own 3D model and bring it to life on a 3D printer without needing complicated software? In this video, I'll show you how to use Tinkercad to create a simple model, export it, slice it, and print it. Whether you're a student, teacher, or hobbyist, this is one of the easiest ways to start with 3D printing. Hi, I'm Jamie from Teachers Tech. On this channel, I help you feel confident with technology. Today we're taking Tinkercad, one of the easiest free design tools, and walking it through all the way to a real 3D print. I'm at tinkercad. com. I'll put the link down below in the description. If you don't already have an account with Tinkercat, it's super easy to sign up and you have a few different options. If you're a teacher, you can sign up with an account because then you can put students in a class. Then you can manage the class easy and see all their projects that they're creating. But if you're just a hobbyist wanting to create account, just go ahead and create a personal account. I'm going to go get logged in with mine.

When you first log into Tinkercad, you'll see three main options: 3D design, circuits, and code blocks. Circuits lets you build and simulate electronic projects right in your browser. You can add resistors, LEDs, and even adrino boards, and then test how they work without needing real parts. Codelocks is a way to design with code. It uses a blockbased system, kind of like Scratch, where you can program shapes to generate 3D models. Both of these are powerful learning tools, especially in the classroom. But today, I'm going to focus on the most popular part, 3D design, where you can build a model from scratch and then actually 3D print it. Let's start our first 3D

design. Now, you can do this in a couple different ways. We could go and click right here, or you'll notice we hit create. We have the option of picking any of the ones that I've showed you already. I'm going to click 3D design. And right away when this opens up, you're going to see the different shapes that you can use. Now, these are going to be the basic shapes and I'm going to be dragging them over. But you can also switch to the different types of shapes. You're going to see from letters to numbers, from creatures and characters, and they have all these different libraries of all these different items. Today, I'll be sticking to the basic shapes, but I wanted to make sure that you knew where everything was to switch. Now the other thing is you can import designs too. So drag or drop your 2D 3D files in here. So these are the different files that Tinkercad supports. So if you have a model already and if you wanted to change it, you could bring it into Tinkercad. Let's start by just

pulling one of these shapes here, this box over to the work plane. Once the shape is placed in the work plane, you can choose to have it selected, which you can tell it's selected by the handles. If I click off of it, you'll notice it goes away. If I click back on it, it's selected again. I can zoom up using my mouse wheel or I can use these over here to click on. I can move this around by left clicking on it. As when I hold my left click, I can place it anywhere I'd like on the work plane. If I hold down the right click, this is where I can change the angle where I can view it. Another way you can do this is by going up to the box. If I click on the top, you'll see we look at the top view. And then as I navigate around the cube up here, but I can also click and hold on my mouse. And as I hold this, I can drag my mouse around to see the different ways in 3D. If you want to quickly get back to the home view, just simply click home. You'll notice if you want to quickly zoom up to fit in the selected area, this is how you would navigate. Now, let's take a look at the

properties. We can adjust these in a few different ways. If we look over here, since we have this is selected, we can make some quick adjustments to the radius, how many steps, the length, the width, and the height. You'll also notice that there's a color here. This doesn't affect on how it's 3D printed on the color. This is just for the design purpose inside Tinkercad. If I select it, you can see how you can quickly pick a different color and even change the transparency. Now, there's another option beside this hole. And we'll be talking about this later on when we're combining different shapes and trying to cut specific shapes out of another. Another way to adjust the properties is to use the handles on the shape. Notice we have white ones, black ones, and a few other options. If I click on this black one right here, notice that it says 20. So, this is going to be the length right now. So, if I click on it again and I click here and adjust it to 50, this will change the length. I can also just grab the handle and I can manipulate it this way. It only allows me to move it in two directions. That's the black one. The white one though allows me to adjust it by clicking and holding it. Will move the length and the width as I drag my mouse around. Another important one is this one right here. This is going to be the height. As I drag this up, you can see how it adjusts the height. We have a couple other ones here. We have this will bring it up from the work plane. So, if I click and hold on this triangle one, notice that this number over here tells me how far off the work plane it is, and it gives a shadow. If I manipulate this to look under, we can see it's the gap in between it. If we're 3D printing, we wouldn't want to have any gaps like that. Another thing we can do is adjust angles. So you'll notice we have two different ones. You can click and drag to adjust the angle. But remember, like I showed you before, you can just write in an angle, which is sometimes easier. So if I wanted to type in 90, it would switch to 90. So as we look at the different way it's presented now, we can even be between the two work planes from above and below. If you spent a bit of time getting it exactly the way you wanted to and you know you needed to have more than one of these, use this up here. If you have it selected and you can use the shortcut control D. If I click it and then if I go back, notice that there's two here. If I wanted to select both of them, I could drag my selection tool around both. Now they're both selected. And I could go ahead and duplicate again. And now I have even more. We can also copy paste. If I have one selected, I can go copy. And notice we have the paste selection here as well. We can also delete. So anything from here can be deleted. We can undo our last steps as well. But we can also use delete on our keyboard to remove any. Some other basic shapes you'll want

to try would be maybe the scribble. If I drag it over, you'll see it opens up in this work plane. This is where you could draw what you would like. And you can also do some erasing. So, if I was going to give this smile, I can go to the eraser and erase. This allows me to draw a larger shape, a little bit different, and I can also erase this way from another object. I can show the preview to see what it's going to be looking like on the work plane. But all I have to do is click done. And notice all the handles are going to be similar. We can resize it here. We can still slant it differently. And we can lift it up, make it higher or off the work plane. We can

also work with text. If you've dragged text over, you'll notice this is where you type what you want to say. So, if I wanted to say hello, I can make adjustments. Same thing to the color like I showed you before. And we can also have a few options of the different fonts. I want to show you how you can

change some movement. Now, I'm going to zoom up. Notice when I click and drag this jumps at one of these blocks each time. These are at 1 millimeter. You can make this an adjustment down here to the snap grid. If I go to 5 mm, notice now it's going to jump 5 mm at a time. So each of these right now are 1 cm. But if you want to change in the settings, you could go to imperial and then you can see how you can scale it from there. But if I close, now we have it at a half inch. But we can make the changes. This is a quarter inch and we'll make those

movements. So you can adjust it the way you want. Another option to use is the ruler over here. If I click on it and drag it to wherever I'd like, I can bring it next to the shape. Notice it shows me a ruler. This can really help when you're setting up an object that has to be a specific shape. If you're going to 3D print something, if I go ahead and grab a handle, notice that the measurement stays on everything as I'm moving it. So, I can adjust it and I'm seeing everything here. But like I said before, it makes it easier to almost just type in the exact measurements that you need. To turn off the ruler, just click it again. The work plane tool allows us to ch to change the reference of the work plane. If I drag this over to a certain side, notice now how it adjusts where the work plane is. If I drag another one, let's say to this side, this becomes the new reference. And when I'm dragging, this is where it's going to stay on. As you notice, as I rotate, if I bring it back to the bottom here, it becomes back to the way we saw it before. Tinkercad makes it easy to place objects on top of each other as you drag out any other object. If you click and hold and you bring it into place to where you would like it, and then let go. So, this saves a few steps. Then you can make the adjustments to it the way you would like. Now, I want to point out different views in Tinkercad. If I go up top here, if I click on bricks, this will give a Lego view. This one gives a Minecraft view. You can't work in either of these. These are just for view. This is an animation lab. I'm not going to dive deep into this, but what it can do is make a simulation. So, if I wanted to have something like a ball move, I can make it dynamic versus static. I can change the material on any of these things. If I want this to be concrete, you can make the adjustment. And notice how it has the material properties. And then I can run a simulation, but I'll do a different video on that. If we click on this one, it brings us back to the 3D design. As you get more and more shapes

on your work plane, you might want to lock some from getting changed. If I click on any shape, not that notice that there's a lock here. If I select this now, this shape can't be changed. The other thing you can do is hide. So if I click on the light bulb here, notice it goes away. We can do this with multiple ones. These won't show up again till I click on the light bulb here. If you want to change multiple objects at once, you can select them all by dragging the selection tool around them. This will show which ones are selected by the handle. Now, if I grab one of the handles to change the shape, notice that it doesn't isn't a constant change. If we wanted to make sure that everything gets changed at the same ratio to be locked, if I hold shift down on my keyboard and then grab a handle, notice how everything's locked and it doesn't skew it. Another thing you can do is to group the different shapes. If I click on one of these, you can see it's by itself. But if I drag the selection around two of them and go up to group, now these two are grouped together. They will move together. They will change the shape together as I grab the handles. If you want to ungroup it, go up here, click again. Now, you can use this when you're placing objects together and making sure that they don't move from each other. If you draw your selection tool around both, hit group. Now you can see that this is one object al together. If you want to subtract a

shape from a different object, you're going to need to use the hole. So if I select this sphere here and I click hole, this is what I'm going to subtract from here. I'm going to move this into this shape. Now if I go ahead group like I showed you before, you'll notice that it gets subtracted from the first shape. Now if I go Z to undo. This time I'll make this the solid and this the hole. This is what's going to be subtracted. So as soon as I draw my selection tool around both and group, this is going to be the final shape. Everything in

Tinkercad gets saved automatically. When you create a brand new design, it gives it a random name. So, this was called Mighty Jake. I'm going to click in here, and I'll just call this one house. That's going to be the new name of the file. If I click on Tinkercad, this brings me back to the dashboard. You'll be able to see the file that we were just working on and the name house. If I want to keep working on it, I just click tinker this and then the original file opens back up again where I can continue. You can also send to up here you'll notice you have some options. You can take it further with Autodesk or you can send it to Google Drive or Google Classroom or you have some other options with 3D communities and services. So now it's

time to 3D print. Let's create something showing you the features that I showed in Tinkercat. And we'll keep this pretty simple. Then we'll go through the steps of 3D printing. First of all, let's grab a shape here. And I'm going to change the shape really quickly. I'm only going to make this about five in height. I'm going to go and do some uh changing of the radius. I'm just going to go to about there. So, I'm going to turn this into a keychain, but I want to write something in here. So, what I want to write, and I'll change the color. Now, the color won't matter when I 3D print it because I'm only going to be printing in one color. But in the text, I'm going to call this uh I'm just going to type in Tinkercad. Just like that. Based on what we did here today. Now you can see it's much too large. I can do a couple things. I can shrink it or make this larger. Watch. I'll stretch this out here. And I can see how it's starting to fit. I'm going to make this a little bit larger. Now I want to change the font on this one. I want to have maybe this right here. That will work. So I'm going to move this on to this. And underneath. I don't want it to go through. I want it to be slightly raised. So, I don't want to see it under the bottom here. And I don't want it quite so high. I only want it to be about maybe uh about there. Just slightly higher. So, it's slightly raised. I could change it if I want. If I want to click on it again, I could raise it by one more. So, the other thing that I'd like to do is put a hole in it so it can be a keychain. I'm going to shorten this up. And I'm going to place the hole. I'm going to make sure this is centered right up here. So, I'm going to go and grab this and I'm going to go and make this a bit smaller and bring it on. And I'll make it a little bit smaller still. And I want it to go all the way through. So, I can see that it's not going all the way through right now. So, I can drag it down. So, now I can see it's going through the top. At this point, I can center it the way I would like. And I'm going to select everything and group. So what you'll see now I have everything under one. It's all connected. So what's the next step once you go ahead and create something?

Let's export it. So I'm going to export it and I'm going to go and export it as an STL and type into the slicer program. Next. Before we jump into slicing and printing, I just want to give a quick shout out to the printer I'm using today. that's right behind me, the Robo E4 3D printer, which Robo sent me to try out. What I really like about the E4 is that it's built with ease of use and reliability in mind. It has a large build volume, so you can print everything from small classroom projects to bigger functional parts. It also supports a wide range of materials, which makes it super versatile. Another highlight is the touchscreen interface and Wi-Fi connectivity, which makes loading up prints really simple, even if you're new to 3D printing. And the fact that it's designed with education and makers in mind makes this a great fit for both schools and hobbyist. I have

the slicer program open here that's going to connect with my Robo E4. What the slicer program does is going to take that STL file that I exported from Tinkercad. When I load it up, it's going to slice it into layers. Then I can send it to print. Each printer will have different slicer programs. I'm going to have a different video about how to 3D print where I'll dive more into this. So, make sure you stay tuned for that. But, let's go ahead and go file and load file. This is just going to be in my downloads here. Here it is. I didn't even rename it. And I went and loaded it. So, now this bed right here matches the Robo E4 that's behind me. So, I know kind of the proportions of how uh how large it will be on it. So, it's this is going to be a fairly good size. Now, with any of these things, I can adjust the scale, but again, I'll do that in a different video. I'm just going to leave it as is for this video. And I'm going to send it to print and show you how easy this is. So, if I go to print, I want to make sure my uh machine is connected, and you can see it is. I'm

just using Wi-Fi. I'm going to start slicing. As I go through, uh I'm going to leave many of these things just at default. the way it was set up. I'm using PLA on the material and I'm just going to click slice. So now, like I said, it's slicing it into different layers. I can see now if I go to the very bottom and drag this back, I can see the layers and layers how the printer will print. So I can go through and check my designs. If I think everything's all right, I can send it to

print now. And all I have to do is click on this. I'm going to keep the name here and click okay. And I can hear the printer behind me right now. That's how easy. Let's check out what's happening back there and then we'll show you the finished product. All right, it's all done. Took about 18 minutes. I'm just going to go back to it. Take out the tray. I can see it on it. All I have to do is peel it off and I'm all done. You can see the Tinkercad on it. Those are some pretty easy steps to follow if you're 3D printing with Tinkercad. And there you have it. Your very first 3D design created in Tinkercad, exported, slice, and then printed. What I love about the process is how simple it is. You go from idea on your screen to holding it in your hand in just a few steps. If you're just starting with 3D printing, Tinkercad is one of the easiest ways to learn the basics and start creating right away. And paired with a reliable printer like the Robo E4, it makes the whole experience smooth and fun. If you found this video helpful, make sure you give it a like and don't forget to subscribe for more tech tutorials to help you feel confident with technology. Drop a comment below. Let me know what kind of 3D print you're going to try next. Thanks for watching this week. I'll see you next time with more tech tips and tutorials.