We worked with students at Tompkins Elementary School this past couple of weeks to teach them about 3D modeling and printing. We used Autodesk's TinkerCAD as the 3D modeling platform. TinkerCAD has a library of basic 3D shapes and objects that the kids can use to assemble into an object of their own design. The TinkerCAD system uses a gridded workspace and allows you to alternate between metric and SAE for units of measure. Once the kids drag a shape into their workspace, they can change its shape, size, and position to meet their needs. They can also turn a shape into a hole with the simple click of a button.
TinkerCAD is a free program but it does require a login, so teachers can create accounts for their students, but since this was just a couple of sessions, we chose to use our team account with just separate projects for each student. That can get burdensome if kids forget to save in their project, and if someone messes up the password, you have to be ready to create a new one to unlock the account, but it worked for us because it made it very convenient to print their projects on a number of 3D printers in our labs.
For the first week, we let them get used to the program by creating and printing any object they wanted. The kids made egg-bunnies, scuba divers, houses, and sometimes just their names. After they completed those projects, we moved on to creating space ships. Although the students didn't participate in the challenge, we used the ideas and resources from the Autodesk - Design for Space Travel challenge. The challenge was designed for TinkerCAD and included step-by-step instructions to help kids get started on building a space ship. Every kid got a completed 3D print of their projects just in time for open house!
