About Lesson
Copying Shapes
Tinkercad has copy & paste option, which will increase your workflow level. This option eliminates the extra time taken to design the same body one more time. We can have multiples of the same design just with a click. It will be of the same dimensions of the original design. We can use this trick with two ways, one is by using short cut key CTRL+C for copying and CTRL+V for paste. The second way is at the left-side top menu we will find an icon of copy & paste use these for applying this trick. You can see in the below image as the copied shaped will always be on the right side.
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Duplicating Shapes
This duplicating tool work as same as copy & paste. The only difference is as the copied body is on the right side of the original body in copy-paste feature, here the duplicated shape overlaps the shape and in-order to separate it we will click on the shape and drag the body apart from each other. Therefore, the copy & paste feature and duplicate feature are mostly the same.
We can use this feature by clicking on the left-side top corner menu, on duplicate and repeat option. A shortcut key can be also used CTRL+D for this option.
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Creating linear patterns
Tinkercad has a hidden method of creating patterns or arrays, it also helps to make our design faster and easier. As we can see in below image (i) we have use duplicate tool for second polygon shape generation, as it is also 20.34mm distance from first polygon shape. Now to make such linear patterns shown in the image (ii) we need to again click on the duplicate option, as we click on it a duplication of polygon shape happens with the same offset and dimension given to the first duplicate.
These linear patterns can be done with any of the shapes, by this way a pattern will be made in a line, therefore is surely save our time and be accurately done.
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Creating circular patterns
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The circular pattern is similar to the linear pattern, as the name says linear pattern follow a line and circular pattern follow circle profile. We can look at the above image (i) as we have elongated shaped on the workplane, we have use duplicate tool and we have rotated the shape to the angle of 22.5 degrees on the left side. Now as we go on clicking the duplicate icon our shape will duplicate in the circular pattern shown in the image (ii) and at the full rotation, our design would look like image (iii). Therefore, we can easily obtain a circular pattern with the duplicating tool. Don’t forget to group your design after using a circular pattern as it is individual bodies.
Creating Scaled Patterns
We can create some more interesting patterns, by scaling up and down the shapes. We will start by adding a box to the workplane then we will duplicate this object and click and drag it off to the side holding down the shift key to keep it constrains. We can also use ATL+SHIFT to scale up or scale down from its centre, see the image (i) and image (ii) to know its working.
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