Design and Print a Simple 6-Inch Ruler in Tinkercad

Have you ever found yourself in need of a ruler but just can't seem to find one? Read on to learn how to design a simple 6 inch ruler (with millimeters too) in Tinkercad that takes exactly 1 hour to print, so you never need a ruler again.

The only materials you will need for this project are:

1. A computer
2. A 3D Printer (or 3D printing service)

I would also suggest getting a mouse, because it will make 3D designing a whole lot easier.

Go to tinkercad.com and log in if you already have an account or sign up if you don't. Once you are on your dashboard, click create, then 3D Design.

Once you create a new design, drag a cube onto the work plane and make it 153 by 25 millimeters long. For the height use whatever you like, but I used 3 millimeters.

Next. drag another cube onto the top of the ruler and make it 0.5 by 10 millimeters. For the height, I would suggest 1 millimeter if you want to be able to print the ruler in one hour. Select both the new rectangle and the ruler by clicking one after the other using the shift key, then click the align button in the upper right. You can also press L to bring up the align tool. Click the two black dots in the bottom left corner to align the two shapes.

Select the first marker we made and copy it by pressing control c then control v. Make the new mark 5 millimeters tall, or whatever height you think looks best. Align it with the ruler the exact same way we did with the first mark, by clicking the two buttons on the bottom left. Next, make sure that in the bottom right corner it says that your snap grid is set to one millimeter. Finally, make sure that you only have the mark we just made selected, and move it one millimeter to the right by pressing the right arrow key once.

Repeat the process we just did with the small millimeter marker four times by copy and pasting the marker, aligning it, and moving it one millimeter farther to the right than the one before it. So for the next marker, you would press the right arrow key twice.

On rulers, there is a 5 millimeter mark that is slightly taller than the regular millimeter marks but shorter than the centimeter mark. To make this, simply copy and paste one of the other marks we have made, and adjust the length to 7 millimeters. On my ruler the rectangle is 8 millimeters long, but it ended up looking to similar to the centimeter marks so I changed it to 7. Once you've made the mark, just do the same thing you've been doing and align it, then move it one millimeter farther than the mark before it. For this one, you would press the right arrow key five times.

Once you have made the halfway mark, just copy and paste another four millimeter markers after it. Once you've added those four, copy and paste the first marker we made, the one all the way to the left, and align it then move it ten millimeters to the right. Congratulations! You made your first centimeter!

Once you make the first centimeter, it gets easy. Just select all of the first centimeter marks except for the very first one and make it a group by pressing the union group in the top right corner, or by pressing control and g at the same time. This will make the marks move together. Copy the group, and just like you've done so many times, align it and move it one farther than the last mark. For this one, it will be eleven millimeters away from the right edge. Repeat this process until you complete the millimeter side! (Here's a tip: to finish the side faster, once you've made two or three centimeters, make all of them a group and copy and paste it and align it. This will let you add multiple centimeters at once). Remember, if you ever have any trouble, you can always watch the video tutorial to see how it's done.

In order to create the inch side, we need to switch the units in Tinkercad to inches. To do this click the Settings button in the bottom left corner, then click the units drop down and switch it to Imperial. We will also need to adjust our snap grid settings. To do this, close the settings menu and click the Snap Grid button in the bottom left and then click 1/16 inch.

The process for making the inches is very similar to making the centimeters, with one big difference. With inches, there are 16 little marks in between each big mark, and there is a medium size mark every four marks. Take a look at the picture above to see what this looks like. To make this, just copy and paste one of the big centimeter marks and align it on the bottom of the ruler. It will help to move your view so that you are facing the inch side, like in the picture. Once you click the align button, click the two black dots in the bottom left corner. Then copy and paste a small mark and align it then click the right arrow once. Make three of these small marks then copy paste a medium sized mark and align it. Move the medium mark one to the right of the third small mark. Repeat this process four times then add a big mark. That's your first inch!

Do the same thing we did with the centimeters to complete the inch side. Copy all but the big mark on the left of the first inch and make it a group with control g. Align the inch, then move it seventeen 1/16 inch to the right. Repeat this process until you finish the inch side. Awesome! You made an entire ruler!

In order to print the ruler, we need to export the ruler into a file a slicer can recognize. To do this, click the export button in the top right, then click STL.

Once you have the STL, open your slicer of choice and upload the file. If you use Cura, you can use the following settings so that the ruler prints in an hour:

Layer Height: 0.2mm

Infill: 5%

Speed: 85 mm/s

Happy Printing!