Creating a Colorful Umbrella With Tinkercad

An umbrella can be used to keep someone dry when it is raining or provided shading on hot sunny days. Would you like to create an umbrella? I will go over the steps to create a colorful umbrella using Tinkercad. You can create an umbrella using different colors than the one I created.

Autodesk Tinkercad: You will need a basic understanding on how to log on and design items using Tinkercad. If you have never created a design in Tinkercad, you should take some of the lessons available in Tinkercad. You should know how to place a shape on the workplane. Along with duplicating, rotating, changing size and color, and grouping shapes.

1. Log onto Tinkercad
2. Click Create new design

To locate the design in the future, I like to give my designs a descriptive name.

1. On the top, left hand side of the screen click the design name provided by Tinkercad.
2. Replace the name with a descriptive name. My design is named Umbrella.

Select the purple Cone shape from the Shape panel on the left-hand side of the screen and place the Cone on the workplane. The workplane is the blue grid area.

The default Cone shape is 20mm by 20mm.

1. Make the Cone shape taller. I changed the height to 26mm.
2. Select the Cone shape by clicking on it. When a shape is selected it will have a blue outline around it.
3. Select and drag the box at the top of the shape until the height shows 26.00.
4. Rotate the Cone shape.
5. Make sure the Cone shape is selected.
6. Select the rotate arrows and rotate the shape 45 degrees.

If you look at my sample umbrella, you will notice that it has eight different colors. Therefore, I need eight cone shapes: one for each color.

1. Select the rotated Cone shape. Press the Duplicate button (top left), or CTRL+D.
2. Mirror the shape: Press the Mirror button (top right), or the M key.
3. Select the arrow on the workplane to Mirror the shape. We want the points on the Cone shapes pointing in different directions. Note: If you click the wrong Mirror arrow, just press it again or select Undo.
4. Move one of the Cone shapes until the points of the two Cone shapes are barely touching.

1. Select both of the Cone shapes. You can either drag the cursor over both shapes or click the first shape and hold down the Shift key while clicking the second shape.
2. Duplicate both shapes. Press CTRL+D or click Duplicate.
3. Rotate the duplicate shapes 45 degrees.
4. Duplicate the two Cone shapes a second time, the system should remember you last actions and automatically rotate the shapes 45 degrees.
5. Duplicate the two Cone shapes a third time, and if necessary, rotate the shapes.

The image above shows you how your shapes should appear.

1. Select one of the Cone shapes.
2. In the Cone attribute window, select the Cone's default color, then select your choice of color.
3. Repeat the previous two steps until your umbrella is the color(s) you desire.

Now that we have the general shape of the Umbrella's canopy, lets group all eight cone shapes together so we can move them as one shape around the workplane.

1. Select all the cone shapes by either dragging the cursor over all the shapes or clicking the first shape and holding down the Shift key while select the other shapes.
2. Press the Group button (top right) or CTRL+G

The umbrella's canopy is usually made from fabric or flexible plastic. The fabric is not very thick, so I simulated the fabric by placing a hole in the bottom.

1. Make sure the eight Cone shapes are grouped together. Press the Duplicate button or CTRL+D.
2. Turn the duplicate Cone shapes into a hole. Select Hole from the shape's attribute window.
3. Move the hole Cone shape down 1mm by selecting the arrow pointing up and dragging the shape down. Note: if you look closely at the hole shape, you can see the hole shape did not cover all of the other cone shapes. The hole shape needs to be larger.
4. Change your focus so you are looking at the shape from bottom, under the workplane. Keep looking underneath the shape until you see the arrow pointing down.
5. Click on the box in the center of the shape. Hold down the Shift key and drag is down to make the hole larger. I increased the hole size from 26.00mm to 26.45mm. Note: Holding down the Shift key with changing one size, will simultaneously change all sizes for the shape.
6. Select all the shapes by drag the cursor over them and click Group or CTRL+G

All umbrellas have handles or a pole, if they didn't then we would just have a silly hat. To create the handle for the umbrella, all we need is one shape.

1. Select the orange Cylinder from the shape panel and place it on the workplane.
2. Note: The dimension of the umbrella top is approximately 50.45mm. Let make the handle about the same height. Change the dimensions of the Cylinder 2mm length, 2mm width, 50mm height.
3. Change the color to black, or a color you like.
4. Select both shapes.
5. Click Align to begin to align both shapes. Click the center align circles to align both shapes.
6. Click the top align circle to raise the canopy to top of the handle.

Your challenge, create a better handle or stand for the umbrella.

Some umbrellas have a little flare on the top. It could be a simple ball, a pointed tip, etc. For this umbrella, I wanted it to look like the fabric was gather at the top.

1. Select the colorful canopy.
2. Duplicate the canopy by clicking Duplicate or CTRL+D.
3. Mirror the canopy by selecting Mirror or the M key.
4. Click the mirror arrow. We want the duplicated canopy facing up.
5. Move the duplicate canopy to the top of the original canopy by select the up arrow and dragging the canopy up.
6. Reduce the height of the duplicate canopy to 2mm by holding down the Shift key and dragging the box directly under the arrow down.

Congratulations! You just made a colorful umbrella. The next step is either adding more details to the design, maybe a beach scene, or saving the umbrella as a shape to be used in other designs.

This video demonstrates how I created the umbrella.

This video shows you have to create a shape from the umbrella that you can use in other designs.