Tinkercad has a wonderful gallery of designs that can aid you in any step of your process. You can copy and modify existing designs that others have made. After completing the tutorial, you'll have already designed a hex wrench, dice, a key ring, and many other objects. Tinkercad has an especially fine tutorialthat can help you get started really quickly. The modeling tools we recommend below have lots of friendly resources to help you get started. You’d be surprised how effective a learning experience play can be. Get into a tool, start dragging in polygons, manipulating scale, combining, subtracting, changing colors. Sketch it out, think of what you may need to build your design.Īnother great way to start is to just play. Sometimes, the tool you choose may not have the features needed to reify your vision. Even the most rudimentary design can increase in complexity when you begin using a tool on the computer to create it. We recommend making a first “draft” of your model on paper.
As with most design efforts, it’s important to constantly “check-in” with the catalyst for the design as you work on it. Realize, too, that design is iterative: as you model, the idea may change or develop or you may discover that you're not fully addressing (or have over-addressed) the original needs. With an idea! Typically, most modeling begins with a need that needs to be addressed or a bit of inspiration that needs physical form. But creating a digital 3D model need not be difficult: online, no-cost tools make it easier than ever before to transform your dreams into a 3-D representation on your screen. Creating a three dimensional object is inherently more challenging - think sculpture. Creating an object in two dimensions is a snap: you can draw on a piece of paper.