Middle School CAD

[Joe Donahue]

Any suggestionsor experience with CAD that you've used with grades 6-8. I'm looking for something with a fairly quick learning curve, ability to assemble, and works on a Mac. I'm very familiar with Sketchup and I like it a lot, but it doesn't really have ability to see if parts fit and function together. Let me know your experiences and thanks.

Joe

[Ryan Barnes]

Hi Joe,

I am in the middle of planning a CAD project for my 7th grade group. I'm really stressed out figuring out what to use myself. The jump from really basic solid modeling (123D Design) to engineering parametric CAD with assemblies and simulation (Fusion 360) is pretty big. I'm leaning towards Fusion 360 though...it isn't too bad realistically, and I think it has the best Macbook trackpad interface of any CAD packaged I've tried. 

I'm going to start putting together little lessons for my group that I'd be happy to share with you as I make them!

-Ryan Barnes

On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 6:12 PM, Joe Donahue <jdona...@gmail.com> wrote:

Any suggestionsor experience with CAD that you've used with grades 6-8. I'm looking for something with a fairly quick learning curve, ability to assemble, and works on a Mac. I'm very familiar with Sketchup and I like it a lot, but it doesn't really have ability to see if parts fit and function together. Let me know your experiences and thanks.

Joe

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Ryan Barnes

Drexel University, College of Engineering

215-262-6792

www.thelowtech.com

[Joe Donahue]

Thanks Ryan, right now I'm leaning toward sticking with Sketchup. I'm thinking that students can get experience in 3D modeling and can create 2D files for laser cutting and that might be enough for 7/8th graders. My big concern is the learning curve. I'm only going to have about 20 hours in a school year to work with each grade and if I want to incorporate CAD, programming, circuitry, and fabrication in a project, I'm going to have to have software that I can get students up and running on fairly quickly.

[Christopher Fleischl]

Joe,

If you are looking for something simple to use with students who have never done CAD before, check out TinkerCAD.  It is free, pretty simple to use, has a great set of built-in tutorials, and runs right in the browser (recommend Chrome), so you can use it on any PC, Mac, or Chromebook.  Students who wish to continue a project at home can just log into their TinkerCAD account on their home computer and pick up where they left off in class.

TinkerCAD supports exporting STL for 3D printing, and SVG for 2D laser cutting.

Regards,

Chris

[Sarah Heacox]

I did TinkerCAD with my sixth graders with great success in limited time. I set them all up with Project Ignite Logins (basically a website that provides more student-focused tutorials on TinkerCAD, and lets a teacher manage what kids are learning). The process of creating TinkerCAD logins for kids is a bit arduous. Project Ignite is easier. Both run on a web browser.

On Thursday, February 18, 2016 at 3:12:11 PM UTC-8, Joe Donahue wrote:

[Steve Westwood]

I findstudents get started in tinkercad fast, and it has the advantage over sketchup of having more reliable 3d printing behaviors.

It exports reasonably well for laser cutters as well.

Thanks
Steve

[Steve Westwood]

[Diego Fonstad]

I too have always recommended TinkerCad... not out of any logic around a skill building sequence, but rather out of workflow and convenience.  

I rarely have trouble printing a model out of TinkerCad (at least not due to the program) and the learning curve is very quick for the students. The designs it is capable of generating are more than sufficient for our project needs.

I am curious what others feel are the negatives of starting with Tinkercad...

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[Joe Donahue]

Thanks everyone, I'm also looking at Rhino5. Anyone have experience with it?

On Thursday, February 18, 2016 at 3:12:11 PM UTC-8, Joe Donahue wrote:

[Ariel Kitch]

I like Rhino a lot, but I haven't yet tried to use it with Middle Schoolers.  It also still costs $95 a license for educational purposes.  I think Tinkercad is a good basic tool to start with!  You can always push more advanced students to use Rhino.

Best,

Ariel

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Ariel Kitch

Middle School Technology Integrator

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[Jeremy Sambuca]

I have heard a lot of good things about Autodesk Fusion360. 

Jeremy Sambuca

Director of Educational Technology

The Hewitt School

212.994.2568

jsam...@hewittschool.org

www.hewittschool.org

@jsambuca

Hewitt empowers girls to discover their full intellectual and creative abilities, to pursue their passions and personal best, and to lead lives of consequence with character, compassion, and conviction.

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[Lizabeth Arum]

I think it depends on the time you have and what you want your students to learn. I use Autocad with my 7th and 8th graders. We meet twice a week for 2 semesters. At this stage in the year, they have covered drafting and how to convert 2D to 3D with revolve, sweep, extrude, loft and solid edit and they are well versed at using Boolean operations. Autodesk is very similar to Rhino and has many of the same commands- I also like using commands over clicking and dragging. I also like the higher end cad packages because modifying models is easier. Autodesk products are free for K12. Once students know how to use AutoCad, switching to Rhino and Fusion 360 is easy.
But if time is short - morphi and Tinkercad are easy to learn and fun to use.
Openscad is also an option that my students have really enjoyed. I had a few students from a previous year that won't use anything but openscad.

Liz Arum
Saint Ann's School

[Joshua Gold]

Bait very powerful for interchanging objects and seeing how they mesh, but take a look at blockscad. Free, web based, block based and uses openscad. Low entry high ceiling. Being a math teacher I especially like it since students can apply algebra to scalability.

[Steve Westwood]

I like Diego's question around learning and the +/- tradeoffs of the different software. 

I've used SketchUo, TinkerCad, Inventor and Fusion with MS students in different contexts, with a tiny bit of AutoCad, Rhino, Sculptris, OnShape, 123d Design, Meshmixer and OpenScad mixed in.  It's a lot of software and I know there is a lot more out there. There's also a lot of different ways to use each piece of software, and they evolve so fast sometimes.  I also remember feeling like Fusion was borderline useless when I first saw it, and it's changed so fast I am in love with it now.  

Here's a first pass of things I've seen, I'd love to hear more about how people are seeing different things adopted by their students:

Geometric Solid Driven:

TinkerCad (My favorite elementary/unmotivated beginner software):
+Web based.-Super Low floor--you can make interesting things fast.  Engaging/empowering for beginners.  Good built in tutorials. 3D prints really easily.  Surprisgly good tools for sizing and aligning features. 
- Doesn't really lead to any stronger CAD solution.  Web outages/lag can be annoying.

OpenSCAD (So many variations online as well, scripted and great open-source community.  I love the math applications)
+Scripted, so editing designs can be easy and dimensional accuracy is a given. 
- Scripted, so less intuitive for may that building in the view window.


Rhino--More of 3D drafting software.  I haven't used AutoCad for 3D things enough to compare. 
+Surprisingly easy entry to more organic models.  Lofts, sweeps, etc are pretty easy,   The default four views are useful for helping students think about things in 3D.  There is a lot of available help to get students at teachers started.  30 seat floating license sets are less than $1000 for schools, though I've not set up a license server, so I don't know how much of a pain that is.  Typed commands and scriptability make for fast work once a user gets comfortable.
-There isn't the ability to rapidly iterate based on history as with the Product Design CAD packages

Product Design CAD: Onshape, Fusion, Inventor, SolidWorks, Etc. 

OnShape
+Free.  Totally cloud/web based, has core capabilities to extrude, revolve, loft, sweep, pattern, fillet etc. Developing rapidly.  Reportedly good design exchange with Solidworks.
- Totally cloud based, so no internet, no onshape. Less power than F 

Fusion
+ Free, lots of modeling power, accessable for beginners with scaffolding, designs stored in cloud, CAM built in. Mac and PC, can work offline. Remarkably powerful software.
- Each student needs Autodesk Account, Helping beginners get traction and not get lost in all the possible features. 

Inventor
+ Like fusion with even more power. Free licenses for schools.
- Windows only.  Less cloud integrated.

Solidworks
+ Like fusion with even more power.
- Windows only.  Less cloud integrated. Free licenses more limited but out there.

Digital Sculpting:
Sculptris!


What have others seen?

[John Baglio]

Thanks so much for the super comprehensive review.  Very helpful.

--John

[Justin Lai]

We've used Tinkercad via Project Ignite with over 300 Gr 6-8 students this year. We setup a classroom for each of our 20+ sections (we're on trimesters) and it does take some guiding to create the accounts at the beginning. Our class is an elective, but we are slowly getting interest from our 6th grade colleagues to introduce Tinkercad into the students' core classes.

We have them work through Let's Learn Tinkercad, Space Station, and Everyday Objects Pt 1. After they have completed it, we do a spot check to verify they have done the models.

The next step is to give them a physical object and a ruler so they can model with dimensional accuracy.

After that, we allow them to print something they have modeled. We end up scaling down so that it is ~1 cu in of model material, but really depends on the nature of the model. We point them to Thingiverse, Pinshape, and Youmagine as places for inspiration, but they *must* make the model. If they aren't sure where to start, we say that it can be a gift for someone. Common themes are: models from games/movies/etc., something geometrically complex and would be difficult to make by hand, something with basic function (a name tag). If a student has made something pretty complex, we do a quick search within the Tinkercad gallery to see if there's any obvious copying :)

For students whom we have a second time around, we introduce them to Onshape. We used to use Solidworks, but now on board fully with Onshape. We had a few 6th graders who mastered Tinkercad quickly and they have come in on their own time to learn Onshape.

As we know, no software fits everyone's needs, so I hope you can find the one most suited to your students and school. We think we've found a good sequence for us.

Let me know if you have any other questions (either email or on the forum)
Justin