Tinkerplay Combines 3D Printing and Modelling in One App

Autodesk has found a way to marry 3D printing with the rapidly growing entertainment market. Its newest product Tinkerplay is all about modeling your own unique toys. 80.lv had a little chat with Sarah O’Rourke, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Autodesk. She told us about Tinkerplay and the way this app works.

About Tinkerplay

With Tinkerplay you can easily design and 3D print fun characters, scary creatures or anything else you can imagine using the built-in part library. Simply drag parts together and they snap in place, just like in reality. The Tinkerplay app is based on the popular Modio app, which Autodesk previously acquired, and has joined the Tinkercad family of products. The goal of this product is to make 3D design and 3D printing fun for everyone.

Creators, designers and makers from ages five to ninety, have blown us away with their passion for 3D modeling and 3D printing. With Tinkerplay, we’re providing another great tool designed for kids of all ages who want to play, create and tinker.

The goal of our development team all along has been to make something complex like 3D modeling and 3D printing as easy as possible. With our app you can customize your creation to make each part your own with amazing surface textures and shapes, create custom environments for that perfect photo of your masterpiece and other cool stuff. For users that are inspired to take their design skills one step further to create completely new parts, Tinkerplay connectors can be found in the Tinkercad web app.

Makind 3D modeling accessible for children

While developing our tools we kept everyone in mind – beginners to advanced. We tested, tested and tested to make sure every aspect of the app was fun, engaging and easy to use. The product team loves creating characters more than the users.
The coolest part is that all the elements from Tinkerplay are optimized for 3D printing as fully poseable characters and creatures, and are designed to not require rafting or support material to print. The print function within the app shows the layout of parts for 3D printing and provides an easy way to export print files to a variety of 3D printers. The app currently supports printing on your own printer but we plan to connect with print services at a later date.

Free for All

The app is completely free and supports Autodesk’s goal of offering our software free to students, teachers and educational organizations worldwide. Our goal is that everyone unlocks the designer inside of them or let’s that inner kid out to make something cool.

Sarah O’Rourke, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Autodesk.