A Community Making Program · Week 3

From Idea
to Object

A one-week 3D modelling program for curious 13-year-olds — design a real object in three dimensions and discover how things get made

✦ 9 Design Challenges ✦ 5-Day Program + Saturday Meetup ✦ Free Browser Tools ✦ Printed on the Club's Bambu Lab Mini

Choose Your Challenge

Pick whichever challenge excites you most — and it's completely fine if two kids pick the same one. The same problem solved two different ways is one of the best conversations the meetup can have. Click any card to learn more.

Your Toolkit

Everything here is free and runs in a web browser. Real engineers and designers started exactly where you're starting — with simple shapes and a lot of curiosity.

The Club Printer: Bambu Lab Mini Your designs will be printed on a real printer — the club's Bambu Lab Mini. Its maximum print size is 180 × 180 × 180 mm — an 18-centimetre cube, roughly the size of a soccer ball — so make sure your design fits inside that box. One big warning: large objects take a LONG time to print — a palm-sized object can take hours, and something that fills the build plate can run a full day. Start small. A keychain prints in minutes; small is how every designer learns fast. On Friday, hand your finished STL file to R — he runs the printer and will help you print your model.

Speak the Language

Eight words that make you sound like (and think like) a designer. Drop these at the meetup.

The 5-Day Design Journey

Monday through Friday, each day has a focus and a journal prompt. Saturday is the meetup. Designers don't get it right the first time — the week is built around making a version one, finding its flaws, and making it better.

Discussion Questions

Questions to chew on during the week — and to fuel the Saturday conversation. Not every question needs an answer.

The Saturday Meetup

The goal is simple: kids demo, adults learn. Each kid gets 5 minutes to present their design — the problem, the process, and the object spinning on screen. Here's how to run Saturday together.

🎥 The Demo Structure

Whether you present live or record a screen capture, keep it under 5 minutes. Here's a structure that works:

1.Introduce yourself and your design challenge (20 seconds)
2.Show the problem: what does this object fix, hold, or help with? (60 seconds)
3.Spin the model on screen — walk through how you built it from simple shapes (90 seconds)
4.Show version one vs. the final version — what did you fix, and why? (60 seconds)
5.Your verdict: what would you design next, now that you know how? (30 seconds)