

There are many good tips and tricks you can learn and they also demonstrate how Autodesks’ other apps interface with 123D Design.

If you are new to 123D Design and/or 3D designing in general, we would recommend checking out these videos. This is a great way to begin manipulating an object and discover how shapes are combined to create objects.Īutodesk has also created a number of tutorial videos that are available on YouTube. To start, we recommend downloading some 3D designs others have created. The touch screen of the iPad seems to lend itself very well to 3D design and we feel this is the direction things will go in the future Yet the program is robust enough to actually create some complex and practical objects. 123D Design is simple enough for a child to use and a great way to introduce children to 3D design. This app was designed to be used by the iPad.”
#123D DESIGN GEARS SOFTWARE#
This is not desktop software converted to an iOS. You get a basic slate of shapes and then have to use the tools to manipulate them into what you want. One user, The Organist, writes, “This 3D design is very simple and easy to get into. Please note: this article is based on the 123D Design that was released on January of 2014.ġ23D Design gets a 4-star rating on iTunes. Not only can you create your own designs, but you can share your designs with other through Autodesk’s cloud. The software allows you to choose and manipulate basic shapes to form 3D objects. Note that Tinkercad does not have options like orthographic view or a proper text tool compared to 123D.123D Design, by Autodesk, is a consumer 3D design application that is designed specifically for iPad. I recommend it for beginners who want to try out Tinkercad but may not be ready to commit. When creating complex designs, 123D can sometimes run very slowly and Iâve often experienced crashes.
#123D DESIGN GEARS FREE#
123D vs Other Platformsġ23D is a free software mainly targeted towards beginners or users with some basic CAD experience.

Simply enter the dimensions of your 3D printerâs plate and youâre good to go. However, before exporting, remember to convert it back to millimeters! Edit gridĮdit Grid allows you to set the grid size to match your 3D printer. If you want to use inches, you can by adjusting the unit. Otherwise, you could end up making a huge error. Knowing this, be careful when drawing custom designs. UnitsģD printers use millimeters as the default unit for measurements. If required, the user can turn it off and drag the object randomly around the grid. Snap decides the intervals that an object can be moved/rotated on the grid. After selecting the primitive from the menu, you much first input the dimensions of the object and then the object can be dropped on the grid. One cool aspect of primitives is that users can adjust their size. Primitives are pre-made 3D models that users can start a design with, but they are limited. Meshmixer and 123D Make are both handy tools I use to check my model before exporting it to my 3D printer. I only work with STL but highly recommended that users figure out their 3D printerâs requirements and choose the appropriate format based on that. With Import, users can import a 3D model or a sketch/2D image in SVG format and then extrude this sketch to 3D.Įxporting as a 3D model provides four format options: STL, SAT, X3D, and VRML. 123Dx extension, which means these files can only open in 123D. Note: Files saved to your computer are saved with a. The tabs shown by the green arrow are Undo (ctrl+Z) and Redo (ctrl+Y) and come in very handy when designing a model.
