TinkerCAD was developed back in 2010 but 2013 the company had to stop their cloud services for the browser based CAD software. Only one month later TinkerCAD was bought by Autodesk and they continued development of the software. Now TinkerCAD and WeDesign are in a public beta testing.
If you want to use TinkerCAD you have to register on the website with your mail-address or with your Facebook account. When starting the web based software the first time it will automatically start up a tutorial for you. Of course when you already know how to handle the software you can step over the lessons. One of the main features is that you can work together with other people on your project. This could also be very interesting for teachers because so they can help their students easily when a problem occurs.
As additional program WeDesign was published. This is a similar software but with completely other features. It’s more complicated to create objects but you have lots of extra options when it comes to work together with others. For example it’s possible to add users to your project that can only view but not edit the objects. WeDesign automatically creates a video of the modelling process which you can share if you want or you can share your object through Twitter with a single click.
In WeDesign a feature called „3D printing enabler“ is added which will work as a basic slicing software. Because of the software being now in beta, this function will not work but it will be added soon. TinkerCAD has no slicing software included but it lets you download your object and import it into your slicer. Both programs are free at the moment but it’s not yet known if they will stay free in the future.
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