I was excited to hear that Autodesk was going to keep the lights on

3D Printing
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I was excited to hear that Autodesk was going to keep the lights on for Tinkercad, but today read that Autodesk is partnering with Makerbot, and now I’m waiting for the other (third?) shoe to drop; what do you all think about these developments?

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Lots of people complained about Tinkercad going offline. Now lots of people are complaining about Makerbot and Autodesk keeping it alive. Make up your minds! Or learn some actual 3D modeling…

That’s my $0.02

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Fair enough @ThantiK .

I imagine the right response is simply to build something better and keep it open. I’m just tired of being reminded of what Makerbot has become; it would be nice if they would just go on to build pretty machines for architects to print model homes out with and be done with it…

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@Jason_Gullickson TinkerCAD is a really amazing tool that could-have and most likely will be a barrier breaker into younger age groups and inexperienced modelers that can help grow this niche into something huge. When I first used it I totally wanted to bring it to the kids in our local STEM group because of just how easy it is to use and create in. Are there any open source groups working on something like this easy to use simulation similar to TinkerCAD that you know of?

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I looked hard for something like that @Jason_Ray because I was setting out to do just that (introduce elementary students to 3d design & printing). I settled on Tinkercad because I didn’t find any FOSS options that were right, and when Tinkercad opened their educational program (and granted our school 1000 seats of licenses) it was too good to turn down.

Then a few days before I was to being teaching the class, was the announcement of their shutdown, and I didn’t feel right teaching these kids how to use a tool that would soon be gone, so we switched to Sketch-Up, which frankly sucked by comparison for this application :slight_smile:

Now that they are back I was excited but with this partnership I’m again cautious, and looking for alternatives. While they were “down” i researched what it would take to build an alternative and it wasn’t as hard as it might seem, but didn’t get too far down that road before the partnership with Autodesk was announced.

So at this point I’m still considering alternatives again, but I’m also considering dramatically different tools for teaching children how to model things, but the research goes on, and I’m always open to suggestions :slight_smile:

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@Jason_Gullickson we’re on similar paths! If I find something I will keep you informed. I was also thinking about some sort of Plugin style theme that turns sketchip/Openscad/coffeescad into a TinkerCAD type tool…

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The shutdown announcement literally came a couple days before I was giving my first presentation to the kids… I went in with Sketchup and it didn’t end well… I emailed Shino for some more details and if I get something interesting from her I’ll pass it on.

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FWIW, this went over pretty good as an alternative :wink: http://www.gullicksonlaboratories.com/using-reprap-to-bring-minecraft-creations-to-real-life/

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What about @CoffeeSCad ?

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@Nils_Hitze @CoffeeSCad is awesome for high schoolers, but for young kids it may be tough Oder?

@Jason_Gullickson just came upon 3Dtin.com don’t know too much about it, but it seems to be a nearly identicle TinkerCAD clone… Playing with it now.

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I am in the same boat, was sad to see TinkerCad go, but I am a bit iffy on Autodesk buying/ reviving it (given Autodesk’s track record, and also let’s face it, was hoping TinkerCad would be open sourced , yeah , wishful thinking, I know) .

One of the important aspects for such online platforms is being at least “open data” if not open source : this way , the day they go down/close, you can at least do a big data dump and not loose your stuff (tbh I do not know if TinkerCad allows for bulk export)

About @CoffeeSCad : @Nils_Hitze , @Jason_Ray currently I don’t think it is nearly as accessible or polished as TinkerCad , so I don’t think it can be used by young kids , but @Erik_de_Bruijn and I are working on a different UI for CoffeeSCad wich is a lot more accessible.

Also , no wild promises , but if you have ideas on how to make it accessible for kids and/or for explaining design and 3d printing, I am all ears :slight_smile: