When Tinkercad joined the Autodesk family in 2013, we saw a simple product with a powerful story to tell. Today, Tinkercad is home to over 300 million designs and has introduced nearly 37 million people to the world of make and design. On Tinkercad’s birthday week in March, nearly 40,000 of you attended our virtual #tinkercad10 birthday bash. Talk about a socially distant party!

For many in the Northern Hemisphere, June marks the end of the 2020-21 school year. Like many of you, we welcome the respite and pause for a moment of gratitude and reflection. For our friends in the Southern Hemisphere, don’t fret! On Tinkercad, learning is always in session. 

Where We've Been

February 2020. The Smithsonian Collection

When the Smithsonian announced a contribution of hundreds of 3D scans of historical artifacts into the Creative Commons through the Smithsonian Open Access Initiative, we collaborated with their team to bring a handful of these models into a collection that all Tinkercad users could explore and use.

March 2020. Tinkercad for Distance Learning

When the global pandemic first hit, walls between school and home evaporated overnight. Educators and parents alike asked for project-based learning (PBL) that could keep students engaged and meet learners where they were. So, Team Tinkercad kicked off a 100-day sprint to bring you the coolest PBL ideas to bridge instructional continuity: 

You can find all these projects and more with #tinkertogether on the blog and social.

April 2020. Making at Home Collection

It’s inspiring to think of the infinite possibilities created by digital design and fabrication. But it can also be useful to understand how digital tools like Tinkercad can help you make the most of what’s right in front of you. It’s in this spirit that we created the Making at Home collection, built right into the Tinkercad shapes menu.

May 2020. Design Gallery for Classrooms

With the addition of galleries to the Tinkercad Clasrooms dashboard, teachers can browse through all of their students’ designs on a single page for quick review. 

As the pandemic stretched into the next school year, we introduced new features, tooling, and resources that make Tinkercad an even better tool for the classroom. These included:

August 2020. Lesson plans from Engineering to Language Arts

Lesson plans supported classroom instruction for a quarter-million of you in the 2020-21 school year. 

November 2020. Micro:bit simulation in Tinkercad Circuits

Circuits simulation enabled students worldwide to overcome device access challenges of distance learning.

December 2020. 3D annotations for process documentation

3D notes helped you unpack your most complex designs just as professional designers and engineers do. 

March 2021. Celebrating 10 years of Tinkercad

Tinkercad's 10th birthday bash welcomed 40,000 of you, including ten inspirational innovators and their Tinkercad stories.

May 2021. Scratch Week with Tinkercad Codeblocks 

Featuring daily design challenges to close out end-of-year projects, assessment, and celebrations. 

May 2021. Send and Receive with Google Classrooms

Enabling even more seamless assignment and project workflows for students and educators.

June 2021. Co-Teaching & micro:bit Lessons

An ability to add co-teachers to Tinkercad Classrooms has been our #1 most requested feature for some time now. We're pleased to say that the capability is now available (more information coming soon). We love educators and want Tinkercad to be even easier to co-teach with. Because the only thing better than a teacher is a pair of teachers implementing kick-butt instructional strategies together. 

Another highly-requested feature is a selection of self-paced micro:bit lessons that students can use to learn micro:bit in our Tinkercad Circuits editor. These lessons are now available.

All year long. Teaching with Tinkercad Webinar Series

20,000+ educators tuned in live and on-demand to these PD hours from around the world. 

Back-to-School with Tinkercad

In August, we’ll resume regular programming for educators. Look for live and asynchronous PD opportunities as we roll out blogs, tutorials, and a webinar calendar to help you bring Tinkercad to your classroom. These will include a review of Tinkercad Classrooms, and SafeMode.

Did we mention you can introduce your students to augmented reality with Tinkercad? With just an iPad and the Tinkercad App, check out how you can apply AR to your 3D designs! More on this soon.

Tinkercad and You: A Story Continued

As we look to the next chapter, Tinkercad has become a fully integrated ecosystem for the next generation of designers and engineers to acquire the foundational skills for innovation: 3D design, electronics, and coding. When students sign up for Tinkercad, they are taking their first steps to acquire the skillset, mindset, and toolset to solve old problems in new ways and prepare for tomorrow’s jobs. 

Whether you’re here to learn, teach, or grow, we’re here to support your journey. Tinkercad gives you the superpower to make designs, but you make Tinkercad the incredible community it is today.

Thank you for being part of our story!

- Team Tinkercad