123d design vs tinkercad3/16/2023 ![]() MeshMixer is such a different program than either 123d Design or Tinkercad that I don’t plan to discuss it in this post – maybe later. Unfortunately, it can also be very frustrating to discover that after many hours trying to incorporate some specific feature into your 3D design, ‘you can’t get there from here’ and you are left high and dry with nowhere to go. ![]() These are all free applications that purport to make it easy and intuitive to create 3D designs for 3D printing, and all three offer some amazing capabilities and features for free apps. In the process I have learned a LOT about AutoDesk’s Tinkercad, 123d Design, and MeshMixer applications. Since then I have spent countless hours with the printer and several different 3D CAD applications to design and instantiate various 3D designs. There is more to learn, and takes longer to master.I started into the 3D Printing world just a few months ago with a PrintrBot Metal 3D printer, a strong commitment to learn, and and very little else. A simpler example is driving a car with an automatic transmission vs driving one with a manual transmission. It's like the difference between flying a remote control model airplane, and flying a real airplane, most RC planes have 2 to 5 controls on the remote and the time and knowledge to fly it is relatively short, but the cockpit of an airplane has many more controls, gauges, and informative displays, and requires a lot of studying, training, and practice to learn how to fly safely. And the more control the user has in a program, the less intuitive the program itself is. There are MANY assumptions to the design itself that are made by an application like Tinkercad, while Fusion 360, or full blown AutoCAD give you significantly more control. You have to realize that a program like Tinkercad is designed for the total novice, my 14 year old son started using Tinkercad to make designs to 3D print on our printer. In response to Fusion 360 being too "confusing" vs Tinkercad. In short - I really want to take the next step from TinkerCad to 123D Design, and am even willing to pay for it - but the inexplicable discrepancies between these products, many of which make 123D Design a much *less* useful tool, compel me to stay on the free platform. I have no idea what they're called or what they're for, and I can't find any way to turn them off. When I open it in 123D Design, I see the same shapes, but there are all kinds of haphazard sketch lines shown on it. * I designed a model in TinkerCad that's a simple set of geometric shapes. what in the world?! Why would you choose to cram spheres and rectangles into a multi-click option at the top, and use the entire right-hand pane for a massive library of completed models? Is this a design tool or merely a front end for Thingiverse? Very weird design choices here. Very useful! In 123D Design, the primitives are jammed into an option in the top toolbar, while the right-hand pane includes a whole bunch of highly specialized finished models and model parts: Battleship, Bicycle, "Gadget" which features custom-made cases for the Galaxy III and iPhone 5. * In TinkerCad, the right-side pane features a hierarchy of drawing primitives - not just basic primitives, but community-generated tools that enable parameterized shapes: not just a cylinder, but a cylinder with a top radius (x) and a bottom radius (y) and a radial segmentation of (z). I don't even know how it works yet, but it's very different, and more cumbersome, than TinkerCad's model. In 123D Design, selecting a model simply selects the model - you then have to choose Scale from the pop-up toolbar, and use the UI of the tool to scale the model. ![]() * In TinkerCad, selecting a model immediately shows a bunch of handles that you can drag to move or resize it. In 123D Design, F is merely Fit: it zooms in on the model, but apparently doesn't lock the focal point. Very soon after focusing on an object, you're no longer focused on it you're instead focused on some completely random point in space. Very frustrating. * In TinkerCad, F is Focus: selecting a model and pressing F locks the viewpoint focus on the model, and rotating the camera orbits the model. * In TinkerCad, mouse movement rotates the viewpoint, and Shift + mouse movement pans the camera. In 123D Design, holding down Shift does nothing mouse movement still rotates the viewpoint. ![]() The biggest problem I'm seeing so far is that while 123D Design has all of TinkerCad's functionality, the UI is quite different. is stability a significant problem?), so that's off-putting, but otherwise it was OK. The app crashed once about five minutes in (er. Having spent about ten minutes with 123D Design - so far, I like what I see. I've been using TinkerCad heavily for a few months, and today I decided to give 123D Design a shot - specifically because the UI looks very similar to TinkerCad, just taken to the next level. ![]()
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