3D Modeling and Printing With Tinkercad: Create and Print Your Own 3D Models

I have been looking for a book like this one for a while. I recently purchased the MakerBot Rep x2 3D printer as a gift for my nephew (9) and niece (7). We got the 3D printer set up and successfully printed out some sample objects, and the kids were eager to learn more and create their own designs. James did a really good job explaining complex concepts, dry and technical skills in simple and fun ways. All project models in this book are well designed and selected. They are also well arranged in different chapters from easy to difficult, different models illustrate different features of TinkerCAD and different modeling techniques. My nephew learned Minecraft programming, so he picked it up very quickly, but even for my niece who hasn’t learned Minecraft yet, she was also able to follow the book and design the models fairly quickly. I was impressed that she did not lose interest halfway. I was concerned that kids at her age wouldn’t have enough patience to go through it. I think she summarized it well, “it’s fun and cool!”. Now my brother-in-law (who is an engineer) is learning using this book, :)James also did a good job helping readers understand the broader 3d printing ecosystem and community, which I think is very important. He covered the software side such as Autodesk 123D Apps to 3D design, to printing services and platforms such as i.Materialise, Shapeways, Sculpteo, and how everything in the ecosystem work together to create and produce amazing things.There is one feature in TinkerCAD which I think it’s very useful to users, but not mentioned in the book is smart duplicate. It basically creates patterns or shapes with repeating structures, it’s repetitive and tedious done manually. Users can simplify press Ctrl + D to accomplish that. I believe this is a new feature the TinkerCAD team is quite proud of.

While the book seems fine, there have been changes to the Tinkercad interface that haven't been revised in the book which makes some sections a little difficult to follow.

"3D Modeling and Printing with Tinkercad" is an easy to follow guide for novices wanting to learn how to use the excellent (and FREE) on-line Computer Aided Design application TinkerCAD. I have become very interested in 3D printing and wanted to dabble with some of own designs, so picked up this book to help guide me with the program's features and functionality.The lessons are well thought out, easy to follow, and build on the previous examples, providing the user a good working knowledge of 3D model creation by the end of the book.This is an excellent entry level introduction to TinkerCAD and, using the skills taught int the book, I was able to create a customized challenge coin with my company logo!Highly Recommended!CFH

TinkerCad is a free web based CAD program. It runs entirely in the browser using WebGL, so you’ll probably want to use it with Chrome (I think Safari may work in Yosemite+). TinkerCad is meant for novice CAD users. So novice that you can know absolutely nothing about CAD and be able to make something after five minutes of their built in learning quests (tutorials). Then you an save your creation to their cloud or download it for 3D printing.TinkerCad isn’t full featured. You can’t add chamfered edges for example, but you can combine shapes with CSG operations, stretch and rotate them, and add useful prefab shapes like letters and stars. There is even a scripting language for building programmatic objects. The UI challenge of building a CAD for newbies is daunting, yet somehow they did it. TinkerCad almost went out of business since it turns out novice users are also unlikely to pay for CAD applications. Fortunately AutoDesk bought them and have made TinkerCad their free entry level offering.But this is a book review, right? 3D Modeling and Printing with TinkerCad is a new book by James Floyd Kelly. it walks you through the basics of navigation, creating shapes, merging and subtracting them, all the way to printing models and importing them into Minecraft. The book is very well written and easy to follow with lots of pictures.So should you buy it? That depends. TinkerCad’s own interactive tutorials are quite good. While I enjoyed the book I’d say 75% of it covers the same things you’ll learn in the tutorials. It really comes down to whether you are more comfortable learning on screen or by reading a paper book. If you learn by paper, then buy it.

Used this as inspiration for a workshop at school on 3D printing. Best book on the topic I have seen for cheap intro to the topic.

this book does walk users through how to use tinkercad (old UI i think, but new UI isn't too much different as far as the normal controls go), and some basic stuff concerning 3d printers, but it is really really basic. If you spend some time on the internet and maybe play tinkercad's tutorials, you'll get much more done. it's a good overview, but I don't think it's much more than that. Goes over tinkercad controls, some 3d printer stuff, thinking of new ideas, mentions shape generators, but doesn't really say much about anything more advanced other than mentioning advanced features exist.

Great training exercises, shows how to turn digital photos into 3D Models.

Good basics, although after playing with Tinkercad for awhile, it is pretty easy to figure out just by atching a couple of videos and messing around with it. Pretty simple program, my son loves it. If you learn better from book than tutorial videos and trial and error, I think you will like this book. There is more info in here for expanding on more complex designs as well

Buen libro para iniciarse.

Für den ersten Einstieg geeignet.Jedoch im Ganzen schon wieder vom Fortschritt der Softwareentwicklung überholt.Arbeiten mit Workpane, Ruler und Bemassung fehlen vollständig.

Fully details and easy to use process to prepare for 3D printing.

This book is very well written and all the activities are well described. Tinkercad is an amazing free web tool and apart from a couple of quirks is very intuitive to use. Being so simple (yet effective), this book offers little that I did not already know from reading on the web and a quick playaround. I guess I was hoping for some big leaps in understand but they are not in this book because they don't exist. Tinkercad does what it does, and does it well.One of my first experiments with Tinkercad was to build a box - a floor and four walls and I did this by positioning five slabs together and grouping them into a single solid. I later learnt that two cubes, one slightly smaller, could be used together with the smaller box forming the hole. Much quicker and less fussy to do. More on such modelling techniques would have been good and applicable to pretty much any design software.My lowish rating is not intended as a detraction from the author's jolly good work in producing this book, but I would question whether it needs to exist in the first place.