Toybox: CAD

Designing a powerful cross-platform CAD experience specialized for 3D Printing.

My Role:

Product Designer

Team

Cody A.

Jenn C.

Kyle M.

Zach O.

Duration:

9 Months

Platforms

Mobile

Tablet

Desktop

Skills:

Wireframing

Interaction Design

Visual Design

Prototyping

Problem

“How can we create an accessible cross-platform 3D modeling application?”

Previously, users did not have the ability to 3D model and create their own creations from scratch. Our mission was to create a new experience for users to seamlessly 3D model and print their toy directly in the Toybox app.

Research

Competitor Analysis

To better understand what was already on the market, I conducted a competitor analysis with existing desktop and mobile 3D modeling apps.

What differed the most was that this app would be specifically designed for 3D printing.

    TinkerCAD

  • Works great on desktop (what our primary audience is used to using)
  • Lacks a useable mobile UI

    Shapr3D

  • iPad only
  • Relies heavily on Apple Pencil
  • Great beginner tutorials
  • Relies heavily on large screen real-estate

    Shapeyard

  • Many sub-menus to navigate through tools

Research

Synthesis

Using the competitor analysis results, the team and I synthesized the most important features that would be needed in a 3D modeling app for Toybox.

    Creation

  • Boolean operators
  • Primitive Shapes
  • Modify
  • Transform Controls (translate, rotate, scale)
  • Copy
  • Split
  • Draw
  • Import

    General Tools & Actions

  • Undo/redo
  • Group/ungroup
  • Arrange objects
  • Layers list / Object management

solution

Introducing a new way to 3D model on Toybox!

Users can now seamlessly 3D model directly in the Toybox platform and 3D print their creations on any device.

solution

Properties

Desktop

The Properties panel is purely contextual to the selected object on the scene and appears within the 3D scene when clicked.

Mobile

Due to the lack of screen real-estate on tablets and phones, this is a contextual menu that slides in as an overlay.

solution

Essentials Menu

solution

Tools Menu

Subtract + Combine

Duplicate + Arrange

Impact

The most popular Toybox App

Wthin the first week we found that more than 53% of the overall toys being created on Toybox were from the CAD app within the first week of release!

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