BUILD A 3D MODEL PLANE STEP BY STEP INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO DESIGN A 3D MODEL PLANE IN TINKERCAD CONTENT:

BACKGROUND Pages 2-5

1. Tinkercad… What’s that? 2

2. How do I move around in Tinkercad? 2-3

3. How do I design in Tinkercad? 4-5

4. Creating holes and cutting shapes 5

THE BUILD Pages 6-19

5. How to create the body/fuselage 6-9

6. How to create the wings 10-13

7. How to create the propeller 13-15

8. How to create the tail 15-16

9. How to create the wheels 17-18

10. How to create the engine 18-19

 

   

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BACKGROUND 1. Tinkercad... What’s that?  To design your plane you will be using Tinkercad. It is free and runs in a browser, which means you don’t need to install anything on your computer. Tinkercad is easy to use and ideal for creating objects to be 3D printed.

2. How do I move around Tinkercad? When you open Tinkercad you are presented with an empty workspace also known as a ‘workplane’. This is where you will design your 3D models.

To start using a shape, click over it with your left mouse button and simply drag it into the workspace. To move around Tinkercad you can use the navigation tools in the top left corner. The four arrows will spin your model left or right and tilt it up or down. You can also use the plus and minus to zoom in and out. If you have a scroll wheel mouse you can use its buttons like this:

● Right Button - Press and hold the right button whilst moving the mouse, you’ll spin around in the workspace and tilt the model. This is known as the pivot.

● Middle Button - Press the middle button to move the model left or right. This is known as a pan.

● Left Button - Click the left button to select an object while you click, you drag it too. This will move it around the workspace.

To select multiple objects you can hold down Shift while clicking on all the elements you want. If you are selecting a lot of shapes, it might be

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quicker to click with your mouse on the background and drag. This will draw a blue square that will select everything that’s inside it when you release the mouse button. When a shape is selected it’s outlined in light blue. Also, tiny white squares, a rounded double-sided arrow and a black arrow on the top appear. Dragging any of the tiny white squares makes the shape change its size horizontally, this is known as scaling the shape. If you drag the black arrow on top the shape is scaled vertically. Using the double-sided arrows will rotate the shape.

When rotating a shape you are presented with a blue circle that allows you to rotate the object in two ways. The options include moving in larger increments (22.5 degree angles) or in smaller increments (1 degree angles). To rotate the object in larger increments simply position the mouse over the inside of the circle. To be more precise and rotate the object in smaller increments position the mouse over the outside of the circle.

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3. How do I design in Tinkercad? You will take basic shapes as the base of your model and transform these shapes to create the ones you need. Tinkercad provides these basic shapes through several panels, such as the Geometric panel, Shape

Generators panel or the Components panel.

The first thing you have to think of is what shapes you need and what final shapes you want to achieve. For example, in the case of your plane you need to design the wheels. For that, you need a round shape. What round shapes does Tinkercad have? It has a sphere, a half sphere and a cylinder in the Geometric panel.

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What happens if you select a cylinder and flatten it down?

You have a wheel for your plane.

4. Creating holes and cutting shapes Sometimes one shape is not enough or you need to alter it using others. You can cut or create a hole in an object like this.

1. Place a shape within or across another. 2. Once the shapes are successfully in place, select the shape you

want to cut with using the left mouse button. Press hole on the right hand top of the screen and you will see the shape you wanted to cut with has become transparent.

3. To finalise the cut, select both shapes by using the left mouse button and holding down the shift key. Press ‘group’ on the top left hand corner of the screen. The shape will be removed and your original shape altered.

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THE BUILD Now you’re ready to start designing our own 3D plane in Tinkercad. Start by designing the body, then the wings, propeller, tail and you’ll finish by adding the wheels and the engine.

5. Designing the plane’s body To design the body of the plane start by bringing a pyramid into your workspace. You need to cut the top off the pyramid and change the square base of the pyramid into a triangle base. To achieve this scale it and rotate it so it looks like the image below:

Now, bring in a box. Position the box so it covers the pointy end of the pyramid, like this:

Select the box and make it a hole. After selecting the box, go to the inspector and click the ‘Hole’ button (the one in grey). Then, select both the pyramid and the box and click ‘Group’. Now you have a truncated pyramid, like it is shown in the following picture:

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You’re going to bring in another box. Position this box against the pyramid like it’s shown in the picture. Stretch it so it’s a little bit longer. This will give a nice structure to the front of your plane. When you’re happy with the position and scale of the box select both shapes and group them. As you can see, when you group shapes in Tinkercad they all become the same colour.

To make the body of your plane triangular use a roof to cut out each one of the sides of the group you’ve just created. First, bring the roof shape into the workspace, then, scale it and position it along the body like in the following picture:

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Once you are finished with one of the sides (remember to select it, mark it as a hole in the inspector and then group both shapes) repeat the process on the other side of the plane. When both sides have been cut off by a roof, your body shape should look like this:

The last step is to flatten the top surface. Use another box and place on top of the body, as shown in the following picture:

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After making this last box a hole and group it with the body you had, the body of your plane is ready. The final shape should look something like this:

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6. Designing the plane’s wings

To make the wings you’ll use the round roof as the basic shape. Bring the round roof into the workspace, stretch it and flatten it down until it looks like the following picture:

You want the wings to have rounded ends. To achieve that, you would need to cut out the ends with a round shape. Tinkercad doesn’t have the shape you need, so build it! Bring a box and a cylinder into the workspace. Make sure they are the same height. Position the cylinder inside of the box in the same way you see here:

Next, make the cylinder a hole and group both elements together. Now, you have a shape with a round side that you can apply to the end of the wings. Position the new tool over the wing so it covers the end. Then, make it a hole:

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Now, group this new tool and the wing so you can get the rounded edge:

Position the wing on the side of the plane, rotate it so it’s angled against the plane’s body and slightly rotate it towards the back. It should look something like this:

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When the wing is ready, copy it to create the wing for the other side. To make a copy of the wing you can select it and press the Ctrl+C to copy, then Ctrl+V(Win) to paste. If you’re using a Mac, press Cmd instead of Ctrl. Alternatively, you can easily drag the shape you want to copy while holding down alt. Now, you have two wings that look exactly the same. The first wing you’ve created is positioned correctly, but the second one needs a slight change - it should be symmetrical to the first one. To make this happen you need to mirror the second wing. To mirror a shape select it, click over the Adjust menu and choose Mirror. When you do this you are presented with three arrows. These arrows represent the X, Y and Z axis you can mirror your shape in.

If you hover over the arrows, before you click on them you’ll see a preview of the result you’ll get, so make sure you check this preview before you choose an arrow to click on. In this case, we need to use the Y axis. See the following picture:

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Once your wing is mirrored, drag it to the other side of the plane and position it correctly. At this point you should have your body and wings looking something like this:

Now your plane has its wings! Time to design the next part - The propeller!

7. Designing the plane’s propeller

The propeller of your plane is composed of two parts: the spinner, located in its center, and the blades, which are positioned on the sides. To create the propeller spinner use a cone shape. Bring it in, scale it and position it at the front of the plane so it looks like a nose:

For the blades, use an extrusion shape. Find it in the Shape Generators panel, in Tinkercad.

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The extrusion shape looks like a cylinder, but it has different properties. You can change the shape of its top and bottom faces. For the propeller blades, you need a teardrop shape. Once you’ve brought in the extrusion, select it and look at its Profile property in the Inspector. You’ll see a circle with four points. This circle is what gives the shape to the top and bottom faces of the extrusion. Drag and move those points around and the shape of the whole extrusion will change. Move them so they form the required teardrop shape.

Scale down the teardrop shape and make it flat. Position it on one of the sides of the spinner and rotate slightly towards the back, the same way you had done it with the wings. This will make it look more realistic. Last, copy this blade over and mirror the copy, so you can have two symmetrical blades that you will position on opposite sides of the propeller spinner.

Group together the blades and the spinner - the whole propeller becomes a single structure. Remember that when you group several objects all of them become the same colour.

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Your propeller is ready!

8. Designing the plane’s tail

For the tail of the plane use the roof and the cylinder shapes. Bring a cylinder into the workspace and scale it so it’s thin and tall as a pipe. Attach this pipe to the back of the plane.

Next, choose the roof shape and scale it so it’s very thin and a bit taller. Attach this to the pipe you made in the previous step. Then duplicate it and move it down, so both are attached to the same pipe.

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Group the pipe and the two roofs together and then duplicate it. Rotate them 90 degrees and position them against the back of the plane.

The last piece of the tail will be another roof. This one will be bigger and located on top of the body, which will give your plane a better structure.

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9. Designing the plane’s wheels

The plane has three wheels. Two of those wheels are located at the bottom of what’s called the A frame (a frame formed by two poles that together have an A shape). The third wheel is located at the bottom of a smaller pole at the front of the plane. To design the poles use boxes and for the wheels use cylinders. Bring a box into your workspace, scale it so it’s quite tall and very thin. Rotate it slightly and position it against one of the sides of the plane.

Now, choose a cylinder and flatten it down. Position it at the bottom of the box you built in the previous step and group both together.

To create the A frame copy the group formed by the pole and the wheel and mirror it. Then, position it on the opposite side of the plane. Lastly, group them so the whole frame is one piece.

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To create the front wheel and the pole it’s attached to, follow the same process and position it at the front of the plane. Then, group all three poles and wheels together.

A plane can’t fly without an engine! Let’s go to the next and final step!

10. Designing the plane’s engine

For the engine, use a hexagonal prism that you’ll scale and position at the front of the plane.

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As you can see in the picture below, only the top part of the prism will be visible, as part of the engine is positioned inside of the body.

When you’re happy with your plane select all the elements and group them together.

Just like that you’ve created a plane. How easy was that?! Have fun building loads of interesting things with all the new skills you’ve learned!

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