From the course: Learning Tinkercad

Creating a dice shape with an intersection - Tinkercad Tutorial

From the course: Learning Tinkercad

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Creating a dice shape with an intersection

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- [Instructor] The goal of this video is to create a dice shape. But first a little background information. Let's start with the provided exercise file. In Tinkercad we group shapes to combine them. In many other CAD programs, this is called a Boolean operation, which is a mathematical term. I'll use a box and a sphere as an example. You can combine these two shapes in a couple of different ways. Adding two shapes together is called a union. Let's try it. I'll use a bounding box to select the blue sphere and red box, and group them. Then we have a union. All right, switch to the next exercise file. Using hole shapes, we can create a subtraction. In the first example, I'll click on the blue sphere and change it to a hole. And in the second example, choose the red box and change it to a whole. I'll use a bounding box to select the first two and group them. Deselect and then select the other two and group them. And you can see two examples of a subtraction. All right, switch to the next exercise file. There's one more type of Boolean operation called an intersection. It's a calculation of the space that both shapes take up. Unfortunately, there isn't an easy button to push in Tinkercad to make intersection shapes. And so we need to do it in a few steps. For reference, there is a dice shape at the bottom of the basic shapes panel, and this is what we're going to create from scratch. All right, I'm going to orbit and zoom in. I'll click on just the box, hold down the Alt Option key and Shift to duplicate a second box. I'll change the blue sphere to a hole. Group that whole object with the box and change that resulting shape into a hole. Now select both box shapes. Use the align tool to center them on all three axes. See their all three centers are grayed out, and I know that they're aligned in three axes. Select both box shapes and group them. And now we have that intersection dice shape. Making intersections in Tinkercad requires you to think a little outside the box, but it's a great way to start thinking about how to create complex objects.

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