From the course: Learning Tinkercad

Copying shapes - Tinkercad Tutorial

From the course: Learning Tinkercad

Start my 1-month free trial

Copying shapes

“

- [Instructor] There's more than meets the eye with TinkerCad's copy and paste options. Let's explore the basics as well as some hidden pro tips to take your workflow to the next level. There are three provided exercise files for this video and I have them all loaded up in tabs here at the top. All right, so this first exercise file has three pyramids, 15, 25, and 35 millimeters. Let's practice copying and pasting. I'll select the smallest pyramid and up at the toolbar choose copy and then paste. Let's try it with the second one. Click the second pyramid, copy, paste. Note the copy offset distance. It's half of the shape's width and it's always placed to the right. All right, let's try this last one. Click on the big pyramid, we'll use control C control V for the shortcut. Now orbit around to the right. Paste again, couple more times, orbit again and paste. Do you see how the paste placement changes depending on your view? Okay, let me show you another variation. This is copy paste to shape. Select and copy the pyramid then select the box and use control V to paste. Orbit around, click the box, and paste again. That time it's on that side. Adjust your view, click the box and paste. Adjust your view, click the box and paste. You can see that sometimes this is a little finicky, the object won't paste to the location you anticipate but just adjust your view and try again. Let's try one more time, select the box and paste, there it is. I also want to show you how to copy and paste with temporary work planes. Use the provided exercise file. Okay, let's copy this pyramid, I'll select, control C for copy, then let's place a work plane on the side of this roof shape. Orbit for a better view, control V to paste. You can see how the pyramid pastes near the original but there's also a projected location on the work plane. You can use the shortcut key to drop it to the work plane. And then move it around, let's delete that pyramid. Let's look at another variation. With that work plane still in place, let's orbit to the side here, select the pyramid and copy it and then paste it a couple times. Do you see how the pyramids are pasted in line parallel to that work plane? Okay, let's undo it, back to one pyramid. All right, one more variation. Let's reset the work plane. Click and copy the pyramid, I use control C. Drop the work plane, select the roof, control V to paste and drop if you need to. See how that did same sort of copy to shape behavior where it pastes to the midpoint? Okay, delete that pyramid. Now I want you to place the work plane, again, paying attention to where you drop the center. Then paste. Delete that pyramid, try it again. Drop in the opposite corner, control V, paste. Now at the moment that is of limited functionality because you can't snap the work plane to a shape but it's still kind of a useful tip, you might find an interesting way to use it. All right, so our last copying option. It's good to know that you can use copy and paste to copy between different TinkerCad designs. Let's reset our work plane, I'll select the roof shape. Control C to copy, switch to a different design tab, control V to paste. So many intricacies for a simple copy and paste operation. I hope you find lots of ways to incorporate these tips in your work flow.

Contents