Lesson video

Hi, I'm Josh.

I'm your computing teacher for this lesson on 3D modelling.

In this lesson we're going to look at making some holes and creating some spaces within our 3D objects in order to further enhance our models and make them a little bit more interesting.

I'm really excited for this lesson so I'm hoping that you are too.

You're going to need a pen and some paper so make sure you have those ready.

You'll also be using the Tinkercad software again.

So make sure you have your class code and your nickname which you have been using for lesson one, two, and three.

Find a nice quiet space, free from distractions and then we can crack on with this lesson.

Right, so let's get started then.

In this lesson you will identify that physical objects can be broken down into a collection of 3D shapes.

You will identify the 3D shapes that I needed to create a 3D model.

You will create 3D models of an appropriate size.

And you will group a digital 3D object and a placeholder to create a hole in an object.

And I'm really looking forward to that specific part of this lesson.

The first thing then we're going to think about is making models of the correct size.

In this lesson you're going to be creating 3D models of pencil holders.

Now, if we want to think about how we can create these pencil holders at the right size we need to consider something first.

So let's have a quick think about that pause the video, once you've had a think resume the video.

Okay, welcome back.

Hopefully then we've had a quick think about what we might need to know before we can create a model of the correct size.

And that is the dimensions or the measurements of the 3D model that we want to create.

Specifically for the pencil holder we need to make sure that we are creating a model that can hold all of our stationery.

And it has all of the different parts that we need to hold those different bits.

So we're going to jump into looking at measurements within the Tinkercad software so we can fully understand how we can create a model that is fit for purpose.

So in the Tinkercad software, we use millimetres.

So each of the little squares are one 1 mm by 1 mm.

Each of the larger squares are 10 mm by 10 mm or 1 cm by 1 cm.

The 3D objects within our Tinkercad software are also measured using millimetres.

So the object on the screen, for example has a width of 31 mm and a depth of 26 mm.

So let's have a quick quiz about measurements within Tinkercad.

So what's going to happen is I'm going to read the question.

I would like you then to point or keep in your head the answer and then I'll reveal the answers once I've counted up to five.

So, what is the width of this object on the screen? Okay, so hopefully then you're pointing or you have in your head the correct answer and that is the width being 31 mm.

Remember the objects within our Tinkercad software are all measured within millimetres.

Okay, using the image again what is the depth of this object? Keep pointing at the screen, keep it in your head.

The depth is 106 mm.

Final question then, no numbers to help you what is the width of this object? Keep pointing at it, keep it in your head.

Hopefully you've got the right answer is 13 mm.

Now this one was tricky because there was no number to help you but what you should have recognised is that each square is worth 1 mm.

There are 13 squares, they are there for 13 mm of width for this object.

Great job if you've got those right.

If you didn't and you want to have a think or go back through them, rewind the video and check those out again and just pause the video to have a little bit more time to think about why the answers are what they are.

Inside Tinkercad, we've already looked at the dimensions being measured in millimetres.

We also measure lift by millimetres.

So if you're lifting an object the number that appears down the right-hand side of the object or on the screen on that object is the amount of millimetres you have lifted it from your work plane.

Okay, so make sure you are ensuring you understand that all of the numbers within Tinkercad are based on millimetres.

This is really really important for when we are creating models of the correct size to ensure that we get them at exactly the right dimensions that we need them.

So let's have a quick look at task one for this lesson.

So on your worksheet, you have got three different objects.

They are roughly a 3D shape.

I would like you to use your work plane drag across the three shapes and have a go at changing the dimensions so they match the worksheet.

It's really important that we are using that dimension to help us create an object that is the correct size.

So pause the video have a go at moving those shapes onto your work plane and altering the dimensions to match the worksheet.

Welcome back.

Hopefully you have managed to add those 3D shapes to your work plane and you've managed to alter the dimensions to match the worksheet.

As I said before really fundamental part of creating models in our Tinkercad software is making sure that they are the correct measurements.

Otherwise, if we were to 3D print them they wouldn't come out the way we'd like them to come out.

or they wouldn't be as fit for purpose as they should be.

We're going to head into the Tinkercad software for the time in this lesson just so we can have a look at how those objects should look and you can match them to the objects that you've created.

Here we are then inside Tinkercad I'm just going to show you what your work plane should look like if you've created a new design and added those 3D shapes to your work plane and just altered the dimensions.

So we're going to drag across our cuboid our cube to start with so I'm going to turn that into a cuboid and that was a width of 100 mm.

So I'm going to use my resizing tool to drag that out so 100 mm by 20 mm depth Oop, it was already 20 mm depth and height 80 mm, quite tall.

So this is the first 3D object you should have had on your work plane.

I'm going to pop it here so we can just ensure that it's on the squares move it forward slightly.

Right, the next thing was a rectangular pyramid.

So I'm going to scroll down on my shape side here find a rectangular pyramid.

I'm going to drag that onto my work plane.

Now this was a width of 20 mm now as we know they do come already with 20 mm you can see that down here.

It was a depth of 20 mm as it already is and it was 70 mm too so I'm going to increase that size there.

So I'm going to place that over here next to my cube.

Okay, so we've got our cuboid we've got our rectangular pyramid now.

And the last thing was a cylinder which I wanted to create a width of 45 mm.

So I'm going to drag out this side here.

So we're already looking at strain shape and a depth of 30 mm I'm actually going to drag it forward to 30.

And we can see that's 30 down the side again.

And it was a height of 40 so I'm going to double the height it is now.

And I'm going to place that in front of my cuboid as well.

So there you have it, you have a cuboid which is if I click on it we'll be able to see the dimensions 20 depth by 100 width and it is 80 high.

We have a rectangular pyramid here, which is 20 by 20 by 70.

And we have a cylinder which is 45 by 30 by 40.

So this is what your work plane should look like.

You might change the colour of your objects if you wanted to but the resizing was the main thing.

And this is how the shape should look on your work plane.

So hopefully yours look very similar to what mine looks like here.

We're going to look at an exciting feature within Tinkercad now something that we can use to really enhance our 3D models and make them as fit for purpose as we can make them.

We're going to look then at 3D objects being used as placeholders.

So a placeholder is essentially a 3D shape or an object on your work plane which you are turning into a hole within another object.

What I'd like you to do, is just have a quick think about which objects have been used to create the holes in the objects on the screen.

So have a look at the objects on the screen think about which objects have been used to create a hole.

Okay, so hopefully you've seen them that the first object on the left-hand side of the screen the cuboid, a cylinder has been used to create the hole within that object.

In the centre of our screen, we've got another cylinder that's being used to create a hole in a different cylinder.

So it's not going all the way through this time which is really important and we don't need to make a hole that goes all the way through sometimes sometimes we just need to make a void within our shape.

And the final shape on the right-hand side of the screen is a cuboid with a cuboid hole.

So a different cuboid has been used a smaller cuboid has been used to create the hole in that object.

So we're going to look at how this can impact our model of a 3D pencil holder now.

So we can use other 3D objects to create holes in our objects within Tinkercad when we're creating our pencil holders.

If you look at the image on the left you can see that it is 60 mm width and the inside width is 58 mm which makes our sides 1 mm.

Can you put 1 mm on each end.

On the other image on the right you can see that it's 15 mm tall on the outside but it is only 13 mm tall on the inside which means our base, that bottom part of our cylinder is going to be 2mm tall.

So hold onto your hats whilst we head into the Tinkercad software and I can show you how we will use other objects to create placeholders for our pencil holder.

So on my work plane then I've got a large cylinder I've made it large so that it's easy to see what's happening.

And the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to drag a cube onto my work plane.

Just so that we can use that to create our placeholder.

Now what I need to do, if I want to make sure that my hole is all the way through my object I need to make sure that my object is as large or larger than the object I'm creating my hole in.

So there we go, I've placed my cube inside my cylinder.

This is where I want my hole to be.

So what we're going to do now is we're going to turn it into that hole.

And you can see up here we've got our Solid colour shape but we've also got this here, which says Hole.

I'm going to click that and you can see it greys out my box.

Okay, my cuboid what it's saying is it's still there but it's actually just creating a void within that cylinder.

Once we've done that and you've got it in the correct position where you want it to be we're going to drag across both of those objects you can hold down Shift if you want to select more than one object.

So for example, I want to select both of those objects I could hold down Shift and click on them both or you can use your dragging selection here to select both and what you are going to do once you've done that is you're going to find this tool bar at the top here.

And we're going to click on this object here which has Group.

You can use the shortcut Control or Command G as well.

I'm going to use this button.

And as you can see, what's happened is my whole object my cuboid has disappeared but it has left a hole in my cylinder.

So you can see it's gone all the way through and that's because my cuboid was at the same level on the work plane and it was as tall or taller than my cylinder.

So we can use that tool.

I'm going to do it again with a cylinder.

We can use that tool to ensure that we are creating holes within our other 3D objects.

So I'm going to turn that into a hole.

I'm going to press Shift this time I'm going to go and create a hole there as well.

So as you can see, I've created two holes in my cylinder.

So that's one way we can do it.

We can drag our box or drag a our shape over here turn it into a hole by clicking the Hole colour and then grouping our objects so that it takes that hole out where the placeholder was.

If you want to use a box or a cylinder you can use this option here, which is a box and a cylinder which already has it as a hole object.

So you can see, I don't need to then change to hole.

That's if you're using a box or a cylinder which are your shapes over here.

If you want to use anything else you need to make sure you are using the object from the right-hand side and you're turning it into a hole by using that option that you got up on the right of the rectangle.

So we can make holes all the way through or as we're going to use for our pencil holders we don't need to go all the way through.

You need that base to ensure that our pencil stay in the pencil holder.

So to do that what we need to do is we need to make sure we have lifted it off of our work planes so it's not the same as our other objects.

So I've lifted that by two off my work plane you can see that down here that's the 2 mm base that I would like my cylinders to have.

I need to make sure that it's tall enough to stick out of my cylinder so that I can ensure that it's making a hole all the way through to the top.

I can turn that into a hole, select my objects and group my objects.

And you can see there is a hole in my cylinder.

And I zoom in so it's a little bit easier to see there's a hole in my cylinder but it hasn't gone all the way through my cylinder.

And, so that is how we would create a void in our shape but not go all the way through and create that hollow side.

Great, so using the selection tool up here to create a hole and then grouping our object.

You're going to have a guy doing that in Tinkercad now.

We're going to jump back to the slides and just run through your task.

Class two is to have an experiment within Tinkercad creating those holes using your placeholders.

So use what you've just learned to create holes in any shape you'd like and just have a play around with that and experiment to see how that goes.

On your worksheet you've got four points that I'd like you to consider as you do that.

So make sure you are reading your worksheet alongside your Tinkercad experimentation.

Once we come back we'll have a look at those different points together.

Sorry, let's have a look at those questions together.

So here are your questions.

Hopefully you had a think about those as you were playing with or experimenting with creating your holes.

Let's jump into Tinkercad again and just briefly model the answer to those questions.

Okay, we're back in the Tinkercad software.

You can see I've still got my object which has got my grouped objects with it.

So the first thing what happens when you try to move grouped 3D objects? It moves in the same way as if you were moving your own individual objects.

You just, they're all going together, okay? Can grouped objects be moved in the same way as ungrouped 3D objects? Yes.

Just like that.

Hey you can still drag them to anywhere you want on the screen and they all go in the same direction and to the same point.

Once 3D objects have been grouped can they be ungrouped? They can indeed be ungrouped.

So I've selected this, I've got four grouped objects here.

We have five grouped objects including my cylinder.

And if we click on this option here you can see its ungroup.

You can use Control Shift G or Command Shift G whichever you prefer.

And it will ungroup.

Now the important thing to think about here is it will ungroup in the order that you've grouped.

So I'm going to ungroup all of them and you can see now if I grouped them all together when I click ungroup, it will ungroup all of them.

If I group them in no particular order if I grouped them separately like so, it will ungroup them in the order that they are grouped.

So now it won't ungroup both of these together.

It will ungroup this one first and it will ungroup this one next.

Okay, so if you are thinking you might have to alter one thing at a time, maybe group them individually.

Or if you are thinking that actually I've known where my things are that they're in the right place but you might have to come back to them later group them as a hole so that you can ungroup them all quickly.

Finally, how can you alter the size of a hole in a 3D object? So if I select all of my objects, got my hole.

I cannot alter this hole or any of the holes without ungrouping them first.

If I ungroup them I can then alter the hole and regroup.

So that was a very brief look at creating holes and using placeholders within the Tinkercad software.

So let's look at your next task.

As I mentioned previously you're going to be making a 3D pencil holder.

And it will look like my pencil holder on the screen here.

It's important to note that the height of each section's base is 2 mm.

And the width of each section side is 1 mm and that's a really important thing to consider as we're going through is making sure that we've got that exactly the same.

So what I'd like you to do is I would like you to pause the video and I'd like you to follow your worksheet.

On your worksheet you've got an image of what it should look like.

You also have the dimensions of each of the different cylinders.

And you can work out the placeholder size by using those dimensions.

So have a go at doing that create your own pencil holder model and resume the video when you're finished.

Welcome back.

I hope you enjoyed creating your pencil holder model and it looks like my model on the worksheet.

We're going to look at a completed model in Tinkercad and just look at one of the ways we could have made our modelling a lot easier and a lot quicker.

So let's do that now.

This is an example then of what your model should look like it's using the same dimensions that are given on your worksheet.

You can see I've got my four cylindrical shapes.

I've got my shallow dish here which I could use to put in my rubber or my sharpener or my paperclips for example.

Got two slightly thinner cylindrical shapes here which I could use to add a few different objects to and I've got my larger one here which could hold a ruler and things like that.

So you've got four cylindrical shapes and they are all touching you can see them touching there.

So if I was to 3D print them it would come out as one model.

What you could have done to make it easier for yourself is you could have taken one of your objects and you could have copied and pasted it.

Now this would have made it a little bit easier for you.

If you want to, when you were creating yours if you wanted to have a shape that had the same dimensions as the one you were creating so for example, I want this one to be the same width as this one, have the same diameter and then I could have just lifted it to the correct height.

Now this should have been on 10 this one I could have just played around with that to make that on 10.

So copying and pasting is a really important function that can help us to speed up creating our models.

So if I wanted to create a model with similar objects copying and pasting would enable me to do that quickly.

And it would ensure that I didn't have to drag another object and add a hole into that object and group it and resize it.

Okay, if you've got an object that you want to make something similar to then you can just copy and paste it and then move on quicker and get through your project a lot quicker by doing that.

So that was just how you could have used some of the functions we've already used.

Hopefully you would have used your resizing.

You would have used your creating a hole using a place holder and your lifting tool as well.

We've got one more thing to look at before we finish off this lesson.

So let's jump into that now.

So the last thing I want us to think about is identifying 3D shapes.

Now your pencil holder was made up of multiple cylinders.

And objects in real world are made up of lots of different shapes.

A lot of them aren't regular but some of them are.

Great, and a lot of them will have chunks taken out of them which could have been made in the 3D modelling software using your Hole function.

And they're all combined together to create an object.

What I'd like you to do is pause the video have a look at the object on the right-hand side of the screen and decide what three shapes you can identify that have been used to create this model.

So pause the video, have a look at the object on the side of the screen and think about what three shapes have been used to create the model itself.

Okay, hopefully then you've managed to pick out a few 3D shapes that might've been used to create this model again, they're not going to be completely regular for all of the time we need to add patterns to certain things or we need to take spaces out of other objects in order to create our objects so it's not going to be completely regular but hopefully you've noticed that there are some cuboids used cylinders and some spheres as well.

And there are lots of other little shapes that could have been used to create the product that's on that side of the screen.

So that is the end of Lesson four.

If you wanted to go back to your pencil holder and add other elements, add a bit of creative flair add some patterns, please feel free to do so.

It's a lovely tool to be able to use in terms of tinkering with our ideas and improving our designs.

I've really enjoyed that lesson I really enjoy using that function to create holes in other objects and to make new shapes.

So I hope you've enjoyed doing that too.

We'd love to see your pencil holders so please consider sharing them with us.

You can do that by asking your parent or carer to share them on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

I look forward to seeing you for Lesson five.