Register Here!

When Reyce’s high school class had to immediately transition to remote learning in the spring, they did so without missing a beat.  As the director of STEAM curriculum, Reyce had a backup plan to make sure her students continued to develop necessary skills in the world of STEAM education.

She had her students enroll in the Desktop Makes 3D Printing Design Academy course and they began the journey of learning how to design their own models for 3D printing from home.  Each student would follow along with the online video lessons and would submit their assigned designs before moving on to the next model in the course.

Join Vladimir Mariano of Desktop Makes, Reyce Krause, and Perry Wolf, one of Reyce’s students, as they share what they learned in successfully transitioning to remote learning to teach students the valuable skill of 3D design.

Get the perspective from the course creator, the teacher, and the student.  We’ll discuss what worked and what we would do differently so you can build from our experience.

Bios:

Vladimir Mariano has taught thousands of students how to create their own 3D models in Fusion 360 through his popular online courses. He also teaches the same material at the college level.  

As a passionate maker, Vladimir currently runs two makerspaces - a community makerspace that he co-founded, and a college makerspace where he teaches students how to design with Fusion 360 and how to turn those designs into real objects through 3D printing, laser cutting, and CNC milling.

His work has been featured by Adafruit, Thingiverse, Hackaday, Makezine, Instructables, Shapeways, and Autodesk.

Reyce Krause is the Director of STEAM Curriculum at the Ma'ayanot Yeshiva High School for Girls where she coordinates the planning, development, and implementation of STEAM classes.  She also runs the makerspace and teaches students in laser cutting, 3D printing, sewing, and more.

Perry wolf is a rising sophomore at the Ma'ayanot Yeshiva High School for Girls and one of Reyce’s students.  Perry completed the 3D Printing Design Academy for the Classroom and Makerspace course through remote learning and will be joining us to share her experience.

Register here!

Construct3D recently hosted an exposure training for the Onshape CAD package based off of Duke University’s CAD 201 Roots Course.  As we look ahead to what the fall semesters might look like, we can speculate that remote learning tools will play an important role.  Onshape, being a pure cloud product, offers many powerful sharing features that greatly extend collaborative efforts.  

In our first Construct3D class, we demonstrated a “quick start” exercise with a simple mold as well as some of the collaboration tools.  In Part II, we will extend this exercise further and cover the concepts of multi-body parts, assemblies and explore more of the toolbar by adding additional 3D features.  

In this two hour workshop, attendees can expect to spend the first hour walking through three additional exercises and exposed to an abbreviated version of the Duke University CAD 210 Roots Class.  Following the first hour of instruction, we will begin a collaborative workshop where attendees will work in teams to simultaneously create a CAD model based on a low fidelity exercise.

Cost per person: $20
Class size is limited

Register Here!

Concept development is a key component in disciplines such as industrial design and mechanical engineering. Successful design solutions are often the result of continuous testing, refinement and improvement, as potential issues of a given concept are discovered and resolved. Remote learning presents a number of challenges for this process, which typically requires physical interaction and use of fabrication tools.

This talk by Alex Lobos, Graduate Director and Professor of Industrial Design at Rochester Institute of Technology looks at ways of maximizing remote collaboration and the use of digital tools in order to effectively explore and develop design solutions. Two key areas will be discussed: first is the use of tools such as photogrammetry to capture physical models with simple photographs and turn them into digital models. These models become easy to share and develop further in CAD programs. The second key area is the combination of analog and digital fabrication tools, organized into a development process that looks at inputs for exploration, and outputs for final design delivery.

These methods illustrate ways for integrating digital and physical tools for design and fabrication, in order to improve concept development processes. This approach allows designers and engineers to turn initial ideas into final concepts in a more efficient, effective, and engaging way, whether working in person or remotely.

Register here!

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, not every instructor was ready to translate their acts of teaching into virtual and digital means. There was one key decision that helped Onur Yüce Gün have a smooth remote teaching experience: preparing a front-loaded syllabus that was ready to be adjusted according to classroom dynamics.

Moving forward, agility will count more than ever, and strategies built to remain flexible that let go of the old norms and normal will have higher chances to win.

In this session, Onur will share his experience in remote teaching, explain why his front-loaded MIT class fared well. He will tell how he created an environment to enable bi-directional adaptation with his students, and what making their agency and fluency top priorities taught him.

Onur Yüce Gün

Onur Yüce Gün is a seasoned computational designer and instructor whose expertise helped him bring non-standard designs in extreme scales, from skyscrapers to minuscule 3D printed lattices, into life.

Onur instituted the Computational Geometry Group at Kohn Pedersen Fox New York (KPF) in 2006. His computational architecture work got published in Elements of Parametric Design. In 2009, he developed the curriculum and directed İstanbul Bilgi University’s undergraduate program in architecture. He taught at MIT, RISD and Adolfo Ibáñez University in Chile, and acted as a mentor at numerous schools and workshops around the globe. Trained as an architect, Onur holds a Ph.D. and a Masters in Design and Computation, both earned at MIT. He is currently the Creative Manager of Computational Design at New Balance. Where he develops computational design workflows and futuristic concepts with a specific concentration on DfAM (design for additive manufacturing).

Register here!

Join prototyping expert Matthew Wettergreen in a small class setting designed for instructors to gain first-hand knowledge in using low fidelity prototyping techniques in remote classes. Sessions will involve a brief activity that requires low fidelity prototyping materials and techniques applied to an authentic project. Then, instructors will engage in a discussion centered around best practices of employing this activity in their own classes. 

Each session will run for one hour. Forty minutes of the session will model the activity, with instructors participating and building as students. The final 20 minutes will include discussion about the structure, execution, and learning outcomes of the activity. 

Three of these small classes will be held, each with a unique activity. Choose to attend one, or all three! Attendees will come away with a document that explains the activity, directs how to run the activity and troubleshoot, and related media

Cost per person: $20
Class size is limited

Register here!

Join prototyping expert Matthew Wettergreen in a small class setting designed for instructors to gain first-hand knowledge in using low fidelity prototyping techniques in remote classes. Sessions will involve a brief activity that requires low fidelity prototyping materials and techniques applied to an authentic project. Then, instructors will engage in a discussion centered around best practices of employing this activity in their own classes. 

Each session will run for one hour. Forty minutes of the session will model the activity, with instructors participating and building as students. The final 20 minutes will include discussion about the structure, execution, and learning outcomes of the activity. 

Three of these small classes will be held, each with a unique activity. Choose to attend one, or all three! Attendees will come away with a document that explains the activity, directs how to run the activity and troubleshoot, and related media

Cost per person: $20
Class size is limited

Register here!

Make: Community and Engineering.com have recently debuted a new system, Make: Projects, to help makers document and share their creative or team-based projects. Make:Projects, is a collaboration platform that brings together makers, engineers, inventors, and doers to develop their passions or solve our society's most persistent challenges.

The messy process of making is at the heart of Make:Projects. It balances being a private space to tinker and organize an idea with close friends, paired with a public forum to showcase work and get feedback. The platform was created to make it easier for individuals, educators, or communities to share the documentation of projects throughout the life of a project. If you are an individual, the system allows for posting rich media (photos, videos, audio recordings) and sharing which makes communication with a community and receiving feedback easy. As an educator, Make:Projects lends itself to tracking and grading team-based projects. Communities can use the platform for posting of science projects, presentation, and grading of submissions. 

In this Construct 3D Summer Symposium webinar, Using Make: Projects to engage students and document their project process, join Dale Dougherty of Make Community and Frank and Lauren Baldesarra of Engineering.com and Make:Projects. They will share the inspiration behind the Make:Projects platform and provide a brief demonstration of the platform, reviewing the basics of setting up a project, documenting the project over time, how to use the platform to receive feedback and guidance by experts, and finally, how to use one of the pre-programmed project templates to accelerate your work. The webinar will conclude with a discussion and reflection on the future of project documentation and collaboration in maker education.

Register here!

Join prototyping expert Matthew Wettergreen in a small class setting designed for instructors to gain first-hand knowledge in using low fidelity prototyping techniques in remote classes. Sessions will involve a brief activity that requires low fidelity prototyping materials and techniques applied to an authentic project. Then, instructors will engage in a discussion centered around best practices of employing this activity in their own classes. 

Each session will run for one hour. Forty minutes of the session will model the activity, with instructors participating and building as students. The final 20 minutes will include discussion about the structure, execution, and learning outcomes of the activity. 

Three of these small classes will be held, each with a unique activity. Choose to attend one, or all three! Attendees will come away with a document that explains the activity, directs how to run the activity and troubleshoot, and related media

Cost per person: $20
Class size is limited

Register here!

If Dassault Systèmes’ SOLIDWORKS and Google Docs had a baby, it would be Onshape. While a terrible analogy, it is perhaps the best way to quickly explain Onshape to those unfamiliar with the tool. This powerful solid modeling program, developed by Jon Hirschtick a founder of SOLIDWORKS, uses Google Docs-like functionality to enable teamwork and file sharing across the cloud for simultaneous drafting. And yes, two people can edit the same model at the same time!

Onshape requires no software installation, is free to faculty and students, and runs on regular computers as well as Chromebooks and iDevices. And it incorporates Github-like versioning, forking, and merging!

While we at Construct3D can’t say exactly what teaching and learning will look like this fall, we do know collaborative tools and workflows will be extremely important. Join us on July 28th at 4:00 PM EST as we demonstrate this software in a compact version of the Duke University CoLab Roots Course, CAD 201. We will modify the seminar for an accelerated audience and highlight the sharing features of the tool. Attendees can expect a brief, up-and-running training and exploration of collaboration functionality.

Register Here!

CAD software has rapidly grown in ease of use and in power, so much so that many elementary, middle, and high school students now use it regularly to design and 3D print all sorts of things. Students and teachers usually start off with creating models of things like buildings, animal cells, or designing stand-alone objects. Making the jump to engineering “real-world” objects that physically fit together with existing things and with each other is a bigger challenge: “No, please don't create a two-inch hole for a two-inch insert.” However, students are capable of meeting this challenge with a little bit of skill-building and practice.

In this workshop on July 23rd at 5:00 PM EST, Kris Swanson will present the series of simple projects and best practices that he and his co-workers at Pine Crest School have used with Middle School students in the 7th Grade 2D3D Design course, as well as on the Competitive Engineering teams.

Using Tinkercad, he will lead you through one of the initial projects in this series. You will create your own custom holder for one of the dozens of remote controls you probably have sitting around your house or classroom. This project helps you and your students work through a simple process - sketching and measuring the real-world object, then custom designing another object that fits together perfectly in CAD software and when fabricated in the real world.

To participate in this workshop, you will only need a few things:

• A standard ruler (make sure it measures in mm)

• A set of calipers such as:

  • These inexpensive ones which are great when you need a class set

  • An inexpensive digital caliper

  • A higher-quality digital caliper

• A remote control to design a holder for - find one that you always seem to be misplacing!

• A Tinkercad account (tinkercad.com). Kris will discuss how he uses Fusion 360 with more advanced students, but we will use Tinkercad for this workshop.

Register Here!

At the onset of the pandemic, resource shortages reached critical levels. Supply chains were depleted as beds began to fill and health systems equipped their staff with additional layers of PPE. Many makerspaces and innovation labs answered the call to support healthcare systems and workers. Those supporting the maker movement frequently discuss the potential of digital fabrication concepts to accelerate prototyping, distributed manufacturing, solve short-run supply chain issues, and generate work products that are portable to large scale manufacturing. For many, it was their time to shine. Overnight we saw makerspaces converted into production facilities and local factories completely retooling to support mass manufacturing of locally generated designs. Arguably, much more has been learned about the concept of localized digital production in the last three months than in the last three years. 

This Construct3D panel on July 21st at 1:00 PM PST/4:00 PM EST starts off with the story of two university maker programs, Duke and UNC and one fabrication artist, Beechwood Metal Works, that adapted their operations during the shutdown to create highly successful PPE programs that, combined have produced over a hundred and thirty-five thousand items for their combined health systems. Glenn Walters, Chip Bobbert, and Casey Lewis will discuss what made their efforts successful, and some of the strategies they used as wellhttps://beam.unc.edu/ as what worked and what didn’t. 

Adding to this discussion is Nicole Wake, Ph.D., an Assistant Professor of Radiology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Director of the 3D Imaging Lab at Montefiore Medical Center. When her health system in the Bronx was particularly hard hit by the surge of COVID-19 cases, she shifted resources towards 3D printing face shields and joined the efforts of academic and corporate makerspaces throughout the New York City area to make a difference. Dr. Wake reflects on her experience and shares her suggestions for how she is looking to draw from her COVID-19 experiences to advance the inclusion of 3D printing in medical education and professional practice.

We'll also hear from nTopology's Annika Norden on her part in prototyping nasal test swabs for COVID-19 diagnosis for Origin, a San Francisco-based 3D printing company that teamed up with the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC). The 3D printed test swabs, designed using nTopology’s nTop Platform successfully passed an initial clinical evaluation for human factors, materials testing, and PCR compatibility. The swabs have also undergone testing by the U.S. Army, Origin material partners, universities, and independent medical labs. 

After sharing individual experiences, the panelists will hold a broader discussion where they will address questions from attendees.

Register here!

Need an online idea for your classes for the fall? Want to participate in a fun at-home activity? Then join us on July 14th at 6 PM EST to learn about casting at home in the age of social distancing. Construct3D Summer Symposium is thrilled to announce a hands-on workshop, led by Taekyeom Lee. Taekyeom will share the process of making soap using 3D printing and silicone molds. Then use your soap to fight the spread of the novel Coronavirus!

In addition to the hands-on casting portion, Taekyeom will demonstrate how he uses Grasshopper to generate his models with his tactile textures, nTopology's Annika Norden will show how to make a reusable workflow to create a variety of surface textures, and  Duke University's Chip Bobbert will talk more about casting and how to make soap from scratch.

To participate in this workshop, we’ll send you the 3D prints or share the STL files with you so that you can print them from home. Please fill out this pre-workshop form by July 2.

Here’s a shopping list so that you can order all your own supplies:

• Smooth-On Silicone Mold OOMOO 25 or 30 (These products do not require vacuum degassing. We recommend OOMOO 25). Here's a link to purchasing in bulk if you are interested in this activity for your fall class.

• Soap base 2lb - Goat milk or Clear Glycerin. If you want, you can use fragrance oils or color dyes.

• Silicone mixing cup (100ml or larger. Microwavable).

• Clear disposable plastic cup 12oz. Here's a link to purchasing in bulk if you are interested in this activity for your fall class.

• Mixing stick or popsicle sticks.

• Hot glue gun or double-sided tape (to hold the original model in the container)

• Disposable gloves- or latex gloves

• Sharpie marker

• Microwave or crockpot (to melt the soap base).
  
   

Shopping list for making your own soap:

• 380g Shortening (vegetable fat) 

• 330g Coconut Oil (Solid, Refined) 

• 300g Olive Oil 

• 310g Water

• 145g Soapmaking Lye (caustic soda)

• 25g Essential Oil or Fragrance oil (optional) 

• Mixing bowls - Sturdy, dishwasher safe

• Mixing devices - immersion blenders are great but you can mix by hand with a whisk

• Thermometer - A regular meat thermometer(not aluminum)

• Heating device for hard oils and or hot processing (crockpot, fry daddy, electric skillet, wok, etc)

• Scale - A regular kitchen scale 

If you’d like an EDU nTop trial or license, send an email to lizarum@ntopology.com.

Register Here!

Moving from teaching in a classroom to distance learning was one of the biggest challenges for educators this past spring. From not being able to walk around a room of students to check progress to not being able to physically interact with them or to help them stay focused, all had to adopt a fundamentally new approach to teaching. 

And yet, the unique scenario of education delivered almost exclusively via screens should be the ideal opportunity to help learners build up their CAD skills, right? Something we can embrace about these times! However, not even activities already executed via computer are exempt from challenges for computer-based distance learning. Thankfully we have an expert from Autodesk who is a deep thinker about these challenges -- and the dark art of inspiring learners into acts of discovery and capability-building within complex design software!! -- to share his strategies with us. 

In this session the dynamic Guillermo Melantoni, Senior Product Line Manager for Tinkercad and Fusion 360 will talk about the response from the product side for both Tinkercad and Fusion 360, will show us some best practices for distance learning, and share some success stories Autodesk has gathered throughout these last very challenging months.

Register Here!

Learn how to maintain student attention and achieve desired learning outcomes in hands-on courses while online.

As we near the start of our next academic year, many instructors are thinking about how to prepare, given the level of uncertainty surrounding our schools and communities. Will classes be in person? Will teaching be all virtual? Will it be some combination?

Hybrid instruction may hold opportunities to combine the best of both in-person and online options using technology with the gains seen in active learning. This June 30, join engineering educator Matthew Wettergreen for a session on how to use hybrid instruction models to maintain student attention and achieve desired learning outcomes in hands-on courses.

Hybrid instruction traditionally combines the use of technology via screen time with in-class time. However, we need to prepare for the possibility that the in-person second half will also be virtual. Luckily, a hybrid approach doesn’t need half of your time spent in person. In fact, it can mean that half your time involves a hands-on activity that everyone participates in. Hybrid instruction also allows the use of a new set of tools, not whiteboards and moveable tables. Instead, the collaborative tools look like wikis, breakout rooms, polls, and the camera itself.

In this Construct 3D Summer Symposium webinar, Hybrid Instruction for Hands-On Classes, Dr. Wettergreen will review the basics of planning to execute a hybrid model including starting with identifying your learning goals, selecting the information to deliver, and selecting the optimal method of delivery based on your comfort level and your students. Participants will be introduced to the key concepts of the model and tools they can select, like an a la carte menu to execute in classes. Case studies will be used to highlight how this model can be used in a variety of settings, including engineering design, maker-focused classes, or non-STEM classes with a hands-on component.

Note this is an updated version of the popular Hybrid Instruction Hands-On Classes session from June 30th.

Register here!

California educator Rob Morrill will explore a variety of ideas for using Tinkercad across the curriculum. Even teachers with little or no previous Tinkercad experience can create projects in which students engage with their curriculum through 3D design. What’s more, when students use Tinkercad without the challenge of making models that are able to be 3D printed, the sky becomes the limit.

Participants will see a variety of ways middle and high school students might be asked to express their creativity and exercise their spatial reasoning in all kinds of classes using Tinkercad as well as Codeblocks. Rob will also share his own and others’ web resources that allow novice designers to dive into meaningful design--even when their teachers are equally new to Tinkercad.

Register Here!

Learn how to maintain student attention and achieve desired learning outcomes in hands-on courses while online.

As we near the start of our next academic year, many instructors are thinking about how to prepare, given the level of uncertainty surrounding our schools and communities. Will classes be in person? Will teaching be all virtual? Will it be some combination?

Hybrid instruction may hold opportunities to combine the best of both in-person and online options using technology with the gains seen in active learning. This June 30, join engineering educator Matthew Wettergreen for a session on how to use hybrid instruction models to maintain student attention and achieve desired learning outcomes in hands-on courses.

Hybrid instruction traditionally combines the use of technology via screen time with in-class time. However, we need to prepare for the possibility that the in-person second half will also be virtual. Luckily, a hybrid approach doesn’t need half of your time spent in person. In fact, it can mean that half your time involves a hands-on activity that everyone participates in. Hybrid instruction also allows the use of a new set of tools, not whiteboards and moveable tables. Instead, the collaborative tools look like wikis, breakout rooms, polls, and the camera itself.

In this Construct 3D Summer Symposium webinar, Hybrid Instruction for Hands-On Classes, Dr. Wettergreen will review the basics of planning to execute a hybrid model including starting with identifying your learning goals, selecting the information to deliver, and selecting the optimal method of delivery based on your comfort level and your students. Participants will be introduced to the key concepts of the model and tools they can select, like an a la carte menu to execute in classes. Case studies will be used to highlight how this model can be used in a variety of settings, including engineering design, maker-focused classes, or non-STEM classes with a hands-on component.