The difference is OpenSCAD is for nerds and Tinkercad is for regular people! HAHA!
There is an easy way to make those in 3D using
DesignSpark Mechanical. DesignSpark Mechanical is the free version of SpaceClaim. The free version has numerous limitations compared to the full version of SpaceClaim, but even with those limitations, it's pretty darn good. The full version cost around $5500 US and I think it is the best CAD software as yet created by us humans.
What you would do is draw out your lines using the 2D drawing tools. Start by selecting File and new. This starts you out in 2D mode and the 2D drawing tools are in the upper left. Make sure before starting to draw that you check the box that says
Create layout curves located in the left-hand panel. Also, decide whether or not you want to work in imperial units or metric. I like to work in metric because 3D printing is mostly centered around metric. To change the drawing units, select File, then the DesignSpark options button and then go to units.
Rotate the view with the middle mouse button. Zoom with the scroll wheel. Pan with the middle mouse button plus the shift key.
Then just draw your lines out in 2D like you'd like them. In this 2D mode, it works just like drawing with any old vector drawing software like Illustrator or CorelDraw. Click that eye down at the bottom to make the X, Y plane perpendicular to the viewport. Draw out your lines how you want them.
Once you're done click the green 3D cube at the bottom of the viewport. You will now be in 3D mode. From here, you can select the move tool at the top center. Click on any one of the nodes and move them anywhere you want in 3D space. You move by selecting something then clicking on one of the Z, Y or Z arrows of the move tool. In just about all software that has anything to do with 3D, red is X, green is Y and blue is Z. The arrow you clicked on will highlight and then you can left mouse button drag anywhere on the viewport to start moving. If your nodes don't seem to be moving together make sure you have the
Maintain sketch connectivity checkbox selected in the panel on the left. However, if they still won't move together you can move them one at a time. Just move the first one of the node where you want it and then select the next one and hit the U key and then click on the vertex or point where you want it to go and it will move there. You can add lines in 3D mode too. You just click on the line tool you want and then click the green 3D cube right there next to the right of the various line tools.
When you get all your nodes how you'd like you're ready to make the lines thickened into solids. To do that marquee select all of the lines and then click the cylinder tool at the top under the insert group. Usually, at this point, your whole viewport will fill up with inflated looking lines. Just ignore that and move your cursor over to the top of the left-hand panel and click the
No merge button. Now zoom in on a line and notice as you slowly move the cursor you can control the thickness. The more you zoom in the finer control you will have of the thickness. That changing number is the radius. For something the size you'd like to print 0.75 to 1 mm radius should be thick enough for Shapeways sintered Nylon. So, when you get the mouse positioned to the thickness you want just left click. Give it some time to do the calculations. The more lines you have the longer it will take. Eventually, SpaceClaim will figure it out and you can zoom out to see the whole sculpture. Be careful not to mouse click as you're zooming out. Notice that all the nodes are highlighted in orange? If you didn't select
No merge those spheres would have been welded to the bars. Yet, if you select
No merge they will be unmerged and also selected.
What you can do now is select the Pull tool at the top center and type in a radius number to make the spheres at the nodes bigger if you'd like. Or, if you want them the same diameter of the bars you can just click in the viewport to keep them the same size. If you accidently clicked and as a result unselected the spheres you can click that black arrow with a green curved arrow icon on the lower right of the screen to reselect what you had selected.
If you decided to keep the spheres the same size you need to weld everything together. Not really, Shapeways' server software will weld everything for you, but it's nice to make things how they are supposed to be before uploading to Shapeways. They are supposed to be one single mesh. To do that, hit control-A on your keyboard to select everything. Or you can just marquee select everything. Then click the Combine tool at the top center and it will weld or boolean everything together into a single manifold shell.
From there you just need to save as an STL file so you can upload it to Shapeways. Click on file and save as and select STL as the save as mode. Notice an options button appears at the bottom of the save as dialog window. Click that and under export, you'll see coarse, medium, and fine. What you've been working with so far is a 3D object that has its surfaces described as mathematical instructions, but what we want to do is make into surfaces that are described by X, Y and Z coordinates comprised of triangles so that the 3D printing software can work with it. So anyway, select fine. You can do a custom setting here too to make the surface tessellation even finer than the default fine setting, but you need to be careful because if you set those numbers too low you'll be waiting all day for SpaceClaim to calculate the STL surface tessellation. After clicking the fine setting click ok and then proceed with saving your file as an STL.
When you upload to Shapeways the upload dialog will want to know what the units were that you used when you constructed the model, click the appropriate radial button and you're ready to upload.
Let me know if you have any questions.