Fall 2023: Can Your Turkey Fly

November Design Challenge

There will be prizes awarded for the Top Three Turkey Designs. Post under #PolarTurkeyChallenge on social channels to share your designs.

To be considered for prizes, please submit all designs by the end of November. Objects will be judged November 30th.

Calling all designers! Create a 3D turkey and add it to our flock! You get to decide:

What color will your turkey be?

What shape will your turkey be?

Whether or not your turkey can FLY!

---

To Enter:

• Create a turkey in Tinkercad or the design software of your choice

• Upload and Publish on the Polar Cloud under the “Contest” category

• Give your turkey a creative description, telling us whether or not it can fly, and a little backstory

• Tag your object with the name of your school

• Make sure you have joined your school! Necessary for eligibility

The 15 submissions with the most likes will be entered into the judging based on the following characteristics:

• Printability

• Design Execution

• Creativity

PRIZES:

• Grand Prize: 3 Spools of Filament for your School

• 2nd Place: 1 Spool of Filament for your School

• 3rd Place: Design Certification and Badge for your Winning Student

Fall 2022: Can Your Turkey Fly?

November Design Challenge

There will be prizes awarded for the Top Three Turkey Designs. Post under #PolarTurkeyChallenge on social channels to share your designs.

To be considered for prizes, please submit all designs by the end of November. Objects will be judged November 30th.

Calling all designers! Create a 3D turkey and add it to our flock! You get to decide:

What color will your turkey be?

What shape will your turkey be?

Whether or not your turkey can FLY!

---

To Enter:

• Create a turkey in Tinkercad or the design software of your choice

• Upload and Publish on the Polar Cloud under the “Contest” category

• Give your turkey a creative description, telling us whether or not it can fly, and a little backstory

• Tag your object with the name of your school

• Make sure you have joined your school! Necessary for eligibility

The 15 submissions with the most likes will be entered into the judging based on the following characteristics:

• Printability

• Design Execution

• Creativity

PRIZES:

• Grand Prize: 3 Spools of Filament for your School

• 2nd Place: $50 donation to your School Store

• 3rd Place: $25 donation to your School Store

Caterpillar Design Challenge

WINNERS ANNOUNCED (5/23/2022)

• 1st Place:

  • Object Name: Skid Steer

  • School: Snowy Range Academy

  • Student: Hayden Donner

  • Link

• 2nd Place

  • Object Name: Cat Excavator

  • School: Eagle Valley Middle School

  • Student: Scanlen Rogers

  • Link

• 3rd Place

  • Object Name: Banana The Caterpillar

  • School: Jackson Middle School - Portland

  • Student: McKinley Fisher

  • Link

---

Spring Design Challenge

A special thanks to our friends at CATERPILLAR INC. for sponsoring the Design a caterpillar Challenge! There will be prizes awarded for each type of caterpillar design category.

Caterpillar (insect)

Design our favorite fuzzy creepy crawly friends in their larvae stage and be eligible to win a Polar Cloud Enabled 3D Printer for your school. Plus $50 will be awarded to the School that has the Caterpillar (insect) design with the most likes!

Caterpillar (CAT Inc.)

Design something to do with CAT heavy machinery! A new bucket for a bulldozer that moves or picks up something specific? A new type of tread meant for better traction on a different ground surface? Get creative and be eligible to win a Polar Cloud Enabled 3D Printer for your school. Plus $50 will be awarded to the School that has the Caterpillar (CAT Inc. machinery) design with the most likes!

Step 1 Decide & Define

Which type of caterpillar will you make?

Is your caterpillar large or small? Does it have a normal circular abdomen or something else, not found in nature?

Think about the daily use of a large piece of machinery. What might make you more comfortable in farm equipment? In times like these, what might help you sanitize the cabin or door before and after use? Use your imagination.

Step 2 Design

Launch Tinkercad and start designing the type of caterpillar you chose. If you’re looking for something more powerful, keep in mind that Autodesk’s Fusion 360 is free for schools.

Step 3 Print & Iterate!

Even if you’re learning from home, you can submit a job request to your School. Work with your teacher to arrange a part pickup or virtual feedback over webcam, whatever your school decides is best.

Step 4 Publish

Share your object with the Polar Cloud Community to officially enter it into the contest!

Requirements:

• Your object has a photo or screenshot

• If you’ve made changes, the object entered is your latest design (remember that you can send directly from Tinkercad)

• Object is in the “Contest” category

• Object is tagged with “#PCCatChallenge” and your “#SchoolName”

• NEW: Add your object to your School Store, just go to the Store tab on your School’s Dashboard and click the green “Add” button. You get to choose your price!

---

Looking for inspiration or need help getting started?

Check out Tinkercad’s LESSONS / PROJECTS pages.

---

Prize & Deadline

Submissions: February 15 → April 15, 2022
Voting: Open Now
Grand Prize Winners announced: by May 1st, 2022

Printed on a Mosaic Palette 2S Pro and Dremel 3D45 from the Polar Cloud

Patterns in Nature

Winter Design Challenge

There will be prizes awarded for the Top Three Snowflake Designs. Post under #PolarSnowflakeChallenge on social channels to share your designs.

Nature is capable of creating precise, mesmerizing patterns. At this time of year in the Northern Hemisphere, one of our favorites is the snowflake.

Snowflakes start as tiny hexagons as they fall through various cloud layers, with each change in temperature and humidity adding to the six arms. As the flake travels to Earth, each arm will experience the same changes, resulting in the intricate and symmetrical crystalline shapes we see.

---

For the Patterns in Nature design challenge, you will:

1. Design a symmetrical snowflake using Tinkercad

2. Upload and Publish on the Polar Cloud under the “Contest” category

3. Tag your object with #GEAEP and the name of your school

JUDGING:

The 10 submissions with the most likes will be entered into the judging based on the following characteristics:

• Printability

• Design Execution

• Creativity

PRIZES:

• Grand Prize: A Polar Cloud Enabled 3D Printer awarded to your school

• 2nd Place: $50 donation to your School Store

• 3rd Place: $25 donation to your School Store

BONUS! USING CODEBLOCKS

This challenge will favor designs that are designed using Tinkercad’s Codeblocks environment. If your school has participated in Hour of Code or want to think laterally about 3D design, we highly recommend you try Codeblocks from Tinkercad. Starting a design in Codeblocks is easy, just select “Codeblocks” from the design bar on the left and then “Create new Codeblock”.

To learn how to use Tinkercad Codeblocks to create a snowflake, check out one of the video tutorials below.

If you need more help, please check out the Codeblocks Quick Start Guide on Instructables or the one dedicated entirely to Snowflakes. Starting a new Codeblock design is easy.

Caterpillar Design Challenge

Fall Design Challenge

A special thanks to our friends at CATERPILLAR INC. for sponsoring the Design a caterpillar Challenge! There will be prizes awarded for each type of caterpillar design category. Post under #PCCatChallenge on social channels to share your designs.

Caterpillar (insect)

Design our favorite fuzzy creepy crawly friends in their larvae stage and win a Polar Cloud Enabled 3D Printer for your school!

Plus $100 will be donated to the School Store that has the Caterpillar (insect) design with the most likes!

Caterpillar (CAT Inc.)

Design something to do with CAT heavy machinery! A new bucket for a bulldozer that moves or picks up something specific? A new type of tread meant for better traction on a different ground surface? Get creative and win a Polar Cloud Enabled 3D Printer for your school!

Plus $100 will be donated to the School Store that has the Caterpillar (CAT Inc. machinery) design with the most likes!

Step 1 Decide & Define

Which type of caterpillar will you make?

Is your caterpillar large or small? Does it have a normal circular abdomen or something else, not found in nature?

Think about the daily use of a large piece of machinery. What might make you more comfortable in farm equipment? In times like these, what might help you sanitize the cabin or door before and after use? Use your imagination.

Step 2 Design

Launch Tinkercad and start designing the type of caterpillar you chose. If you’re looking for something more powerful, keep in mind that Autodesk’s Fusion 360 is free for schools.

Step 3 Print & Iterate!

Even if you’re learning from home, you can submit a job request to your School. Work with your teacher to arrange a part pickup or virtual feedback over webcam, whatever your school decides is best.

Step 4 Publish

Share your object with the Polar Cloud Community to officially enter it into the contest!

Requirements:

• Your object has a photo or screenshot

• If you’ve made changes, the object entered is your latest design (remember that you can send directly from Tinkercad)

• Object is in the “Contest” category

• Object is tagged with “#PCCatChallenge” and your “#SchoolName”

• NEW: Add your object to your School Store, just go to the Store tab on your School’s Dashboard and click the green “Add” button. You get to choose your price!

---

Looking for inspiration or need help getting started?

Check out Tinkercad’s LESSONS / PROJECTS pages.

---

Prize & Deadline

The winners will have their best work featured in the Polar Cloud newsletter and shared with 500,000+ other makers from around the world including employees from Caterpillar and other great companies like GE, Google and Facebook. The winner’s schools will also be invited to join the Additive Education Program for the remainder of the 2020-2021 School Year.

Submissions: September 14 → October 31, 2020
Voting: Open Now
Grand Prize Winners announced: November 6, 2020

Printed on a Mosaic Palette 2S Pro and Dremel 3D45 from the Polar Cloud

Patterns in Nature

Nature is capable of creating precise, mesmerizing patterns. At this time of year in the Northern Hemisphere, one of our favorites is the snowflake.

Snowflakes start as tiny hexagons as they fall through various cloud layers, with each change in temperature and humidity adding to the six arms. As the flake travels to Earth, each arm will experience the same changes, resulting in the intricate and symmetrical crystalline shapes we see.

For the Patterns in Nature design challenge, you will:

1. Design a symmetrical snowflake using the design tool of your choice (Tinkercad, BlocksCAD, Makers Empire, etc)

2. Upload your model to the Polar Cloud with Pattern Challenge in the title and share it with the public

3. Winners will be chosen from the uploaded objects after January 31st, 2019

Selected schools will win a Monoprice Voxel 3D printer! The challenge is open for all participating GE Additive Education Program schools.

DESIGNING A SNOWFLAKE

To create our own symmetrical snowflakes, start by designing a single arm and copy it until you have 6 matching arms, creating the well known hex pattern. We’ll be showing you how to do this using Scratch based programming through BlocksCAD! If your school has participated in Hour of Code or want to think laterally about 3D design, we highly recommend you try BlocksCAD.

To learn how to use BlocksCAD to create a snowflake, check out our tutorial video below.