Coming from Tinkercad
Like Tinkercad, for bigger projects
Sound familiar?
You've made a fair number of things in Tinkercad, and then you hit one of these. A part deep inside a nested group needed a tweak, so you ungrouped three levels, fixed it, and rebuilt the groups by hand. You wanted a fillet where two shapes met and couldn't get one. You needed the same bracket twelve times around a circle, so you duplicated it twelve times. You had a hinge you liked and could only copy and paste it into the next design, with no link back. You wanted to export one sub-assembly under its own name and got the whole design instead.
Tinkercad is built for a first project, and it's really good at that. CubbyCAD keeps the same solid-and-hole model and adds the tools you start wanting a few dozen projects in.
I built CubbyCAD after using Tinkercad, Blender and FreeCAD and wanting something in between.
Side by side
| Tinkercad | CubbyCAD | |
|---|---|---|
| Basic modeling | Shapes, holes, group. Typed dimensions. | Shapes, holes, group. Typed dimensions. Same terms as Tinkercad. |
| Editing inside groups | Ungroup, edit, regroup. Nested groups make this painful. | Double-click into any group at any depth and edit in place. The boolean rebuilds as you go. |
| Reusing designs | Copy and paste between designs. No shared parts. | Embed a part in another part by reference, or split a group out into its own part. Edit the source and every instance updates, so you can build up a library. |
| Curves and profiles | Sketch shapes for extrude and revolve, on the workplane. SVG import. | A 3D sketcher that draws on any face, then extrude, revolve, or loft between profiles. SVG import. |
| Wires and paths | Not available. | Sketch (Wire) draws lines and curves in 3D space, for paths, rails and sweeps. |
| Rounded joins and edges | Radius settings on a few shapes only. | Set a group to Blended for a rounded seam, or use bevel and subdivision modifiers for soft edges. |
| Repeating a part | Duplicate and repeat, one copy at a time. | Mirror, linear, grid, polar and spiral array modifiers. Change the count and every copy follows. |
| Parametric parts | Codeblocks and shape generators. | Script parts in JavaScript or TypeScript. Declared parameters become sliders anyone can adjust. |
| Sculpting | Not available. | Convert any shape to clay and push, pull, smooth or carve it. Strokes go on their own layer. |
| Import | STL, OBJ, SVG. | STL, OBJ, GLB/glTF, FBX, 3MF, SVG. |
| Export | STL, OBJ, GLB, SVG. Whole design or current selection. | STL, STEP, glTF/GLB, PLY, or the built-in slicer. Any group can be exported on its own under its own name. |
| Where your files live | Autodesk account, cloud only. | Your browser with no account, a folder on disk, or cloud sync if you sign in. |
| Also in the box | Circuits, Sim Lab, Codeblocks, classrooms. | Rigging and posing, a command palette, guided tours, an optional AI assistant. |
| Price | Free. | Free. Enhanced unlocks the full toolset and every export format. |
Your first ten minutes
Open the editor
Pick Browser storage when the editor asks where to work (no account needed), then click New part.
Rebuild a Tinkercad favourite
Drag a few shapes from the palette, mark the ones that should cut as Hole, and press Ctrl+G. Type dimensions in the Properties panel. If you have an STL of the original, brings it in as a starting point.
Try what Tinkercad can't do
Double-click into the group and move a shape without ungrouping. Set the group's Style to Blended and drag the blend size. Add a Polar array modifier to turn one part into twelve. Then export just that group under its own name.
Where Tinkercad is still the better pick
Teaching. Tinkercad has classrooms, Codeblocks for learning logic, and Circuits and Sim Lab for electronics and physics. CubbyCAD has none of those, so if you run a classroom or want to simulate a circuit, stick with Tinkercad. If you mostly want better parts off your printer, give CubbyCAD a try.