Tinkercad Circuits Now Works Seamlessly With Fusion 360, Autodesk Says
- By Kristal Kuykendall
- 02/04/22
Tinkercad, the free browser-based app from Autodesk that teaches students design, engineering, and coding, has made its student electronics design platform work seamlessly with Fusion 360, a professional-grade CAD/CAM/CAE tool used by industry professionals across manufacturing, machining, engineering, and industrial design, the company recently announced.
Native Tinkercad 3D geometry has been exportable into Fusion 360 since 2018; now that capability is embedded in the Tinkercad Circuits platform.
“This means that your students’ Circuits designs can be exported with one click into a professional PCB design environment for further tooling, simulation, wiring, routing, and milling,” the company said in a news release.
Tinkercad Circuits is a no-fuss way to get students started with learning electronics, available in 16 languages and on any computer with an internet connection, requiring no additional software or hardware. Using Tinkercad’s interactive electronics editor, students are able to learn how to design and simulate circuits.
Students can now send their Tinkercad Circuits design into Fusion 360 to:
- Simulate and wire in a professional printed circuit board environment
- Auto-route a PCB so that the students can mill it themselves or send it to a vendor for manufacturing
- Mill (get it made by a PCB milling machine, or order it from a vendor)
- Use the resulting PCB as a reference for the design of the enclosure, or for anything else you need to design around it (like a whole robot)
After verifying eligibility for a Fusion 360 educational entitlement, students can take their Tinkercad Circuits designs into Fusion 360 on their desktop, and all the components added in Tinkercad Circuits are now represented on the 2D Board layout in Fusion 360.
To use Fusion 360, students must meet minimum age requirements. In compliance with COPPA, this means being at least 13 years old in the United States.
Find a step-by-step guide to exporting Circuits designs into Fusion 360 on the Tinkercad blog, or learn more about Tinkercad Circuits with the online guide to Circuits for educators.
About the Author
Kristal Kuykendall is editor, 1105 Media Education Group. She can
be reached at [email protected].