From the course: Learning Tinkercad

Combining shapes to make a profile - Tinkercad Tutorial

From the course: Learning Tinkercad

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Combining shapes to make a profile

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- In the next few videos, we'll build a short project. The eventual goal is a finial shape like this one. The first step in the process is to create a 2-D profile. I'm going to make a shape that is symmetrical along one axis. So I'll set up my workspace for that from the beginning. I'll start by dragging a whole box onto the Work Plane, and changing the dimensions so that it's 40 millimeters in length. This whole box is going to act as my midline. I want to focus on one side, and then later I'll duplicate that shape and flip it to make it symmetrical. The other purpose of the whole box is as a size reference. I want my finished profile to be 40 millimeters tall. Having that reference in my view, helps keep me visually stay in proportion as well as gives me a shape to snap to if I want to work more accurately. All right, that whole box is selected. I'll use the shortcut key F to fit to view, and then zoom out attach an orbit, from the basic shapes panel. I'll choose the heart shape. Now I want to take the heart and center it on the side of that box. And I can do that by using copy to shape. So I'll use Control + C to copy the heart, select the box, Control + V. And now the midline of the heart is centered on the side of that box. I can get rid of my original heart, select that second heart, and I'm going to go ahead and rotate it around 180 degrees. Can use shift modifiers if that helps you. Now I want to align the point of the heart with the edge of this box. Select both objects and then use the align tool and align them. That looks great. The last thing I need to do is change the height of the heart to 20 millimeters to match the height of the box. Okay, the next thing I want to do, let's bump into a top view quick. I want to create a line that sort of is at a tangent to the curve of this heart. Let's give that a try. I'm going to use the Work Plane tool, and pick one of those facets of the heart to work from, that looks perfect. And I will add a box, making sure that the edge of the box is somewhere on that facet of the heart. Then I'm going to drag the height of the box, so we're going in the opposite direction, I Think 10 millimeters will do it. Reset the Work Plane, and then use D to drop that box onto the Work Plane. That looks perfect. All right, now let's work at creating a base here at the bottom. Drag another box onto the Work Plane. Let's change the width of this box, so that it is 10 millimeters high. Now I want to align this face with this face. Let's do that. I'll hold down shift, and then click on the whole box so that both objects are selected. Use the align tool, and this time I want to click on the whole box because I want to align the red box to the whole box, and I will get it there so that it is perfectly in line. And then I can use my arrow keys to place this where I'd like to. I'll go into a top view orthographic, I think I'm going to end up placing mine one, two, three millimeters in. That looks great. One more box to add a vertical edge there. And then the last thing I want to do is add a little detail on this rounded edge. I will add a box, adjust it to five millimeters, and place it where it looks good. I want to add a little curved corner here, so let's do that with a cylinder. First, I'll add a whole cylinder onto the Work Plane, and then I will grab the ruler and drop it on the grid or the edge of that boxes. I want to make sure that I am in midpoint mode, and I want to change the offsets, the green dimensions to zero. So the center of that cylinder goes to the origin, and then I'll change the dimensions of that cylinder to 12 millimeters by 12 millimeters. All right, I have all of my shapes in place, I'm going to select them all and group them. And now I have a very nice 2-D profile. So you can see my strategy here, combining many basic shapes to create a more complex outline. Lots of CAD programs have a 2-D mode where you draw lines to create a shape. But in Tinkercad, we mass shapes using lots of basic shapes to create something more complex.

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