At long last, you’ve reached the 3D modelling portion of the course! This skill operates on many of the same principles that you were working with in Animate, with one main difference, the addition of that third – depth – plane to work with!

We’ll start with one of the quickest programs to get started with and the easiest to learn. It will also help you to create your first 3D print in no time.

It’s called Tinkercad, and it’s all online and it’s totally free! You’ll have to create an Autodesk account, if you don’t have one already, in order to get started. Of course you shouldn’t give out too much personal information online, so feel free to make up anything except maybe the email address, which you might need in future.

There are some easy tutorials to get you started. Please access those here.

Once you’ve got the hang of the basic controls, I recommend taking a bit of a video course so that some things can be explained to you. The course accessible at this link is pretty interesting and informative, but the keychain is a piece of junk! Well, it’s not too bad, but the loop that attaches it to your keychain is too small, and it’s kind of weak so it’ll break off (trust me.) Can you improve on the design to make one that won’t break and will fit better? That’s your next challenge!

Make your own model to hand in and/or print out! I’ll show you how to share your project with me when completed. Have fun!