Chapter 6
Design or modify objects with design/CAD software
The Polar Cloud makes use of industry-standard .stl files (and also supports OBJ files), so if you wish, you may use any design or CAD software that supports such file formats, either to create object model files to then upload into the Polar Cloud, or to modify downloaded Polar Cloud objects. See Section 6.5 for an overview of some such design/CAD software.
Further, the Polar Cloud itself provides access to some convenient design and CAD software. On large displays, at the top menu bar expand the “Design” tab and click “Online Design” (Figure 6.1); on narrow displays, expand the top left menu and under “Design” click “Online Design” (Figure 6.2). Clicking “Online Design” will take you to a screen listing design and CAD software accessible via Polar Cloud links; see Figure 6.3.
Figure 6.1: Polar Cloud menu Design → Online Design
Figure 6.2: Polar Cloud menu Design → Online Design (narrow display)
Figure 6.3: Polar Cloud DESIGN screen
At the Polar Cloud “DESIGN” screen, you will see a choice of several design and CAD packages linked directly with the Polar Cloud; see Figure 6.3. Click on a package tile to select it; this will typically open up a new window showing a home/login/account page for that design or CAD package; see details on accessing BlocksCAD in Section 6.1.1, accessing Makers Empire in Section 6.2.1, accessing Tinkercad in Section 6.3.1, or accessing Doodle3D Transform in Section 6.4.1.
After using a design or CAD package to design objects, you may save the object .stl files using the design/CAD package’s usual object file download feature, and then upload those object .stl files (or OBJ files) into the Polar Cloud; see Section 5.3 for a discussion of general uploading of objects to the Polar Cloud. Alternatively, BlocksCAD, Doodle3D Transform, Makers Empire, and Tinkercad support saving a newly designed object directly to the Polar Cloud (no need to first download the object to your device, and then upload it from your device to the Polar Cloud); see Section 6.1.2, Section 6.4.2, Section 6.2.3, and Section 6.3.2, respectively.
When you wish to edit or modify a Polar Cloud object using a design/CAD package, first download the Polar Cloud object .stl file(s) (see Section 5.5), and then import the .stl file(s) into the design/CAD package using its standard import procedure. (For BlocksCAD, see for instance Section 6.1.3; for Makers Empire, see for instance Section 6.2.4; for Tinkercad, see for instance Section 6.3.3.)
