Create Flexi 3D Objects in Tinkercad

[Music] in this video we're going to take a look at how to turn just about any two-dimensional image like this into a three-dimensional flexi object in tinkercad to get started making our flexi 3d object we're going to start from the dashboard and click create new design this is going to open up a brand new blank work plane for us to import our image and hinge files so here we have our nice blank workspace and the first thing we want to do is give it a title it automatically titles it something kind of silly so we're going to name it something a little bit more recognizable now we're ready to import the files that we need we're going to start by importing the image file whether we hand drew it and saved it or found it on the internet by clicking import and then choose a file and this is where you'll need to have remembered where you saved that file and most of us probably saved it in our downloads so we'll navigate back to our downloads and we'll choose the goldfish so we'll select it and then you can click open so right away you see that alert that tells us it's too big for the work plane and i could change the individual length and width but it's even easier to just go to the scale and change it so i'm going to change it from 100 to 50 percent and then if i just click out it's still actually a little too big so i'm going to go back and change it to 25 and that does the trick so now i can import my file so you see right off the bat it's pretty big too big for the work plane still but let's recolor it real quick and make it a little bit easier to see and now we're going to have to manually resize it to fit within the work plane so i can move it so i can see the toggle points and if i click and drag those i'm moving the length and width independently of one another and that's distorting the image so i'm just going to put it back to normal and then hold the shift key and then click and drag and that drags everything or resizes everything proportionately so just recenter it hold the shift key click and drag to the upper right and just keep doing that until you get it to the appropriate size so maybe just a little bit more and that's probably good perfect all right now that we've got that sized we're going to move it out of the way and we're going to need to bring in the hinge files now so this is where in the last step of the directions you need to have opened the file that i've shared with you on google drive if you didn't click that link you're probably not going to find the file very easily so we're going to bring the hinge files in there's actually three hinge files that we'll need and you're going to go up to import and you're going to then choose a file and now we're going to pick a file from our google drive and you should be able to go to the shared with me and it should be one of the very first things that you see if not you can reorder so the most recent stuff shows up first or you can always search for the 3d hinge 3d printing hinge files in the search bar but we're going to open that up and you see that the three files that we have are there so the first one we're going to grab is the punch out so we'll click it highlight it and then we can open that file and another window will open do not resize the file it's very important then go ahead and import it and it will drop it into the work plane so it's very important to not resize this if you accidentally do grab a toggle point just make sure to click control z and undo it the size of this is very precise and it's the reason that the hinges actually work now we can import the next part to the hinge so we'll click import choose a file it will pick up right where we left off in that folder in google drive so we'll select the hinge next and then open and don't resize and import all right so i'm going to take that piece and it's kind of dark color so i'm going to change it and make it a little lighter just make it a little more visible and then i want to move it out of the way but you notice that when i click it it's so easy to grab just the toggle points and not the object itself so avoid accidentally resizing and zoom in a little so you can grab part of it and then just click and drag it along and then you can kind of zoom out a little bit you can also use your arrow keys so you can hold the arrow keys down and move it too now we can go ahead and import the last piece of the hinge files and using that same process we're just going to select that last object which is going to be our slicer and add it into our work plane we want to be able to access these shapes in a faster way so we can click the shapes library drop down menu scroll all the way to the bottom and click on the shapes collection and this will let us create custom shapes so i already have the splicer selected in the work plane and then i'll click create shape and it'll open a new window where i can click around and view the image or view the object but i'm going to rename it and i'm going to call this one slicer and we need this would actually be a cut out so i'm going to change it to a hole and then i'm going to save the shape now we'll see it show up in the shape library to the right and now we'll do the same thing with the rest so i've selected now the pink object or the punch out but i'm going to go ahead and you can do this same thing a little differently we want this to be a hole too we can select hole ahead of time and then click create shape and it does the exact same thing that we're looking for so you can go ahead and rename this and we're going to rename this one hinge punch out and then we can save that shape too and that will get added into the library and then the last piece that we need to add into the library is going to be the hinge itself so we're going to let this piece stay solid and we're just going to call it hinge so retitle it and save the shape now i want to get rid of these parts so let's just zoom out on our work plane by clicking the home button and then i'm going to click and drag just around these three parts to highlight them and then click delete and that will remove them so now what we can do is add them in from our library so i've selected my hinge from the library and then i can drop it onto my work plane just off to the side so it's out of the way and then next i'm just going to bring my fish down to center a little bit then i'll grab the punch out and then we'll add in the slicer that'll be the last piece and now we can work with these objects directly from our library the first change we'll need to make is to raise the depth of that fish to match that hinge height so you notice when you zoom in on the hinge if you click the dot in the center there it tells us that the height or i guess the depth of that is 8.01 millimeters and so i know that i need to match that same height uh to the fish so i'm going to zoom back out now i'm going to change my view so i can click the home button then i'm going to select the fish and select that same center dot and i can see that right now it's at 2.78 so i'm going to just click in there it becomes editable and i can click 8.01 and hit enter and you can see now that has given my fish a little bit more dimension so now it matches that same dimension as the hinge so now the next part that we're going to need to do is we're going to need to get the hinge and the punch out and we're going to need to overlap the two so i'm just going to click and drag to select them and then if i click the frame button on the left side it will drag them right into perfect view so now i've got them right in front of me and what we need to do is we need to take the punch out and we're going to need to put the punch out over top of the hinge so we'll get them a little bit closer together and this just takes a little bit of trial and error so we want to fit that punch out in that cutout space there that you see kind of already in the hinge itself you can kind of see it already has some negative space and you might be thinking that adding the punch out there might make the hinge not work but you'll see how we group it together a little bit later that makes this a functional part so i'm just gonna drag the punch out over that spot and what you'll notice right away is it's hard for me to move this with much precision so what i need to do is go down to the bottom right of my workplane there and i'm going to change the snap grid from 1.0 millimeters to 0.1 millimeters and that's going to allow me to move that in smaller increments and it's going to get it just exactly where i need it to so i'm going to change my view i'm going to select these images and then focus them again and it's a nice way to look at it from the top here so you can see exactly where it's placed and i'm going to actually use my arrow keys to move the punch out around and just get it exactly where it needs to be so i'll show you from a different angle in just a second we're gonna notice that we want the that cutout to really kind of hit the end of that kind of like it looks like a t shape uh and so that area that width in between where my cursor is right now is gonna actually be the exact same space of the splicer or the slicer that we have to use for later that third part that's not really visible right now so we want to move that over it looks like just a little to the right so it's almost right on the edge of that hinge and it looks like it's pretty perfect we are going to have a little bit of the outline of the hinge should still be visible so we see that yellow at the top there and if we switch our view and we look at it from that aerial view we want to just see that it is perfectly aligned and so it is we see that the space we see at the top there is also equal to the space we see on the bottom so i think that this configuration will work pretty perfectly all right so now that we've got that piece where we want it we're just going to leave it off to the side until we need it later and then we're going to grab our slicer and we are going to now want to add this in and we're going to slice up the fish so we can create spaces to add the hinges but before we do that we're just going to shift views real quick and we're going to look at it from an aerial view and then we're going to use parametric design to do this so we're going to need to add the ruler in just a second but like i said we're going to switch it to the top and then let's just move this guy out of the way for a little bit and now we can click on our ruler and we're just going to pick somewhere kind of around the center it doesn't really matter i'll show you why in a minute but we're going to just click and drop our ruler down so now you can see that i've got almost like a coordinate plane and my fish is just offset to the left of that point in the middle which is going to be considered my origin so think of that as like my x and y axis and so we want to have everything though at that origin that be in relation to the midpoint so we're going to click the circle with the three little lines and that is going to shift everything to use midpoint and now you can see that i have the vertical and horizontal lines on my fish the object that was selected and so what that is telling me now when i look at the values of those green lines that i'm showing you now it's just showing me that everything to the left of that origin circle is showing me a negative value anything to the right is going to show me a positive value and so since my fish is just on the left side of that that's why it's showing negative so think of it like a number line and then when i look at my y-axis as well it's showing me that it's in the positive value because it's in the upper two quadrants so if it was down below if my fish was lower than the origin point that would be a negative value so it's kind of hard to tell though which value i've got here so if i just mess with this and do a little trial and error you can see that was not actually changing my position on the plane that changed the size so i just do a quick control z and then i want this fish to be centered around my origin so if i click that value i can hit zero and now my y value is set to zero and then i'm going to click that value down below the negative 25 and change that to zero and now my fish is centered around that ruler origin and then what i can do is i can get my slicer centered the same way so you might have to change your camera angles just a little bit to be able to see the values properly but i'm going to change that and really all i need to change on this is my x value my y value we might tweak it a little bit but we'll look at that from a different angle to see if that needs changing but really it's more important that it's centered around the x so you can see it does i need to go a little bit farther down so i can just select that slicer and use my arrow keys to bring it down but i also notice that i've got this little bit of a problem here and in the final print that little lobe of that fin is probably going to get chopped off so instead of using the origin for this one i am going to move it to the right just a little bit and you notice that that changes my x value to about four or excuse me to about 6.1 but i think we can round that down to something a little more even because we're going to have to do some adding and subtracting and it'll be easier if it's whole numbers so we're going to change it to 6 and then i'm going to show you how we're going to make exact perfect even evenly spaced copies of this slice so now what we're going to do is we are going to use the duplicate tool to make perfect even spaced splices so we're going to change the view a little bit just so we can see the values and so remember it's starting at an x value of six because we're just going to be adding a bunch of these to the right and then a bunch to the left so we're going to start by selecting the slicer and then click the duplicate tool and that creates a copy right over it you can hardly tell because it's exactly where the original was placed we're going to click that value of 6 and we want to now add 10 millimeters to the right so 6 plus 10 is going to give us a total value of 16 millimeters so we're going to the right we're going to add it in the positive direction so now we're not going to select anything else you're just going to immediately see that it creates that copy and moves it over and then you need to go back to the duplicate tool and just keep clicking until you've added all your slices in for that side of your object so that is pretty good there now we need to add the slicers to the opposite side of the fish so we're going to go back to that first slicer that we started with in the middle and we are going to go back up uh to the duplicate tool but we're going to uh be moving this to the left now so we're not going to be adding 10 millimeters we are going to be subtracting so think about this 6 minus 10 is going to be negative 4. so we're going to hit duplicate and then we're going to go down to that x value and this is where we'll add in the value of negative 4 and then we see that it moves it to the left and we're just going to go back up and hit the duplicate tool so it keeps making a space over and over and over again maybe one more i might have to delete that one a little bit later but that looks pretty good there all right so we've got all of our slices in and we can move on to joining them now in the next step so the final piece we might notice down here that there's a little bit of a issue but i think it'll be fine in the final print so now what we're going to do is we're going to join all of those slices and the fish we're not using the hinge or anything else yet so we're just going to click in the upper left and drag down to the right and only get the object and the slices and now we're going to go up to the group tool or you can do the shortcut which is ctrl g and now you can see that all of those shapes have merged together now what we're going to need to do is we're going to add in our actual hinge and so we are going to start by keeping the hinge and the punch out exactly as we had arranged them earlier and the best way to do that is to just click and drag to select both the hinge and the punch out together and then we're going to move those over to the to the fish but instead of clicking and dragging we're going to use the metrics to get it close to where i want that first slice that i made in the fish so we're just going to zoom out a little just use your camera so you can see the values that you're looking for so we're going to change that on the x-axis to 6 and then re-center on that object and we'll change that y value uh which if we keep zooming out should be a negative number since it's so far down the work plane yep we're going to change that negative 71 to zero and so this will get it right along the origin that we're looking for and so we'll center in on that object again and now it's just going to be a little bit of trial and error and working those camera angles and so since i already have both of those objects selected the easiest thing to do is going to be to just use your arrow keys and click to the left or the right wherever you need to get it so you can see that width that space from almost like the bottom of where the hinge is uh kind of shaped like a t should be the same space that we have between the uh slices we've made in the fish so that looks pretty good and i think that looks like it might be perfectly aligned so we're going to change views now and the same way we went to duplicate our slices in the fish we're going to duplicate the hinges so we're going to select the hinge and the cut out again so we'll select one of those objects then hold the shift key down and then just click the other object and that will select both and we want to pay attention now to where the objects are positioned along that x-axis so we can see right now our starting point is 4.2 so if we're going to shift everything equally again our increments were 10 millimeters apart we're just going to add 10 to that number so we're going to go ahead and duplicate that and then we will change the x value to 14.2 that's 4.2 plus 10 and you can see it makes a perfect duplicate and then we can keep clicking the duplicate button and it makes the hinges perfectly spaced now you might use different increments for your project that's fine just make sure that you apply these same concepts that we're using here so now what we want to do is we're going to add them to the left so we're going to select that remember select one object then hold shift then select the other then we'll need to duplicate and it makes the exact copy right over top and now we're going to take 4.2 but we're going to subtract 10. which is going to give us a value of 5.8 so now excuse me negative 5.8 because remember it's going to the left about like a number line so now we can go and click the duplicate button and we can just keep going and this is where i think it's going to actually uh the hinge part is going to be too big for my farthest splice so i'm actually going to have to remove that so i'll get rid of that separately but now you can see how all of my hinges are arranged now we can get the ruler out of the way and one of the last couple of steps that we'll have to do is combine the punch out with our fish so we need to combine all the punch outs and our fish and that will create a space for our actual yellow hinge to attach so we're going to start by selecting the first hinge on the far left hold down the shift key and then just do a left click on the rest of the hinges moving from left to right and then the final piece that you'll select will be the fish itself then you can hit the group button and that will merge all the punch outs with the fish so now we're left with just the fish and our hinges and so the last step will be to merge both of those so we can just start in the upper left and do a click and drag to select the hinges and the fish and then we will group those so the grouping the order of the grouping does matter into making this an effective design but now what we can do is we can take this and we can export it as an stl file and that will be what you upload to the google form in the final step of your directions pay close attention because it will automatically download your file so make sure that when you see a download click show in folder and you should notice that it's actually saving the stl file directly to your google drive with the same name as what you titled it in tinkercad so just remember that if you need to search for it later

Channel: Allison Heischober

Views: 23,225

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Id: HW3vBS-Gnio

Length: 25min 2sec (1502 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 26 2021