Makers Empire 3D is the world’s most fun, easy to use 3D design app created specifically for primary, elementary and middle school students. It’s CAD for kids!
Learn, create, solve, and share with Makers Empire. Makers Empire is loved by 3.6+ million students in 50+ countries and used to create 50,000 new 3D designs every day.
Click a button below to get the app for your device – it’s FREE!
Click on the below tabs to explore app features.
Users are represented in the Makers Empire world with an avatar, which is a useful way to protect students’ identities. We encourage users to be wildly creative when designing their avatar to ensure their avatar is unique.
Create original 3D designs to solve real-world problems, to deepen learning or just for fun! Our free-form Shaper design editor is super simple to use, yet extremely powerful – just add your imagination.
With the Blocker design editor users can build 3D designs using single blocks or groups of blocks. If you’ve played with Lego you’ll understand the joy of creating with identical pieces. Why not try creating an apartment building? Or a giant snail?
The new Advanced module bridges the gap between Shaper, Blocker and professional CAD tools. is Designed for use with a mouse and keyboard, it significantly extends the learning possible for students up to grade 10.
With the Augmented reality (AR) tool, students using the Makers Empire 3D design app can take a live view of their surroundings and then insert their Makers Empire design into it. See lesson ideas and the help article.
The Precision Move, Size and Rotate tools in the Shaper design module give you a powerful degree of control when you need it. With accuracy to 0.01mm you can create surprisingly detailed and precise models.
Create 3D games for friends to play. Maze Mania is about ‘hard fun’: students love the creative and challenging play while teachers love how it helps develop students’ design thinking skills and spatial abilities.
Notes feature enables users to annotate designs to label parts, create narrative and persuasive texts, pose questions and quizzes, show how they have met design criteria & give feedback. See lesson ideas and help article.
Our monthly Design Thinking competitions are super popular and a great motivational tool. Students love testing their skills and sharing their ideas with thousands of their peers around the world.
The Makers Empire 3D design app can be used on almost any device including iPads, Android devices, Windows computers/laptops, iPhones, MacBooks, and most Chromebooks (earlier models may not be compatible).
Login options include QR code (great for young students), unique username, email and password, and various integrations. See our student guide and school guide to installing Makers Empire.
Makers Empire integrates with multiple SSOs. We suggest Google Classroom and Clever as classes sync with the Teacher Dashboard, students and teachers can use existing logins, classes are already set up, and end-of-year rollover is simple.
Download designs as .GLB files to insert into PowerPoint documents, word documents and other presentations. This tool is ideal for students using Makers Empire without access to a 3D printer or learning from home.
Students’ designs can be shared digitally via individual QR codes. QR codes can be added to class presentations and displays and individual cards at an exhibition of your students’ 3D printed designs.
Makers Empire school users can access special features and content that are not included in the basic (free) plan. If you use Makers Empire at school, we recommend that you use your same user account at home and school for the best experience.
The Training Lab houses helpful tutorials and videos. New user should start in either the Video Room or Basic Tutorials. Both these rooms are designed to teach users how to use the app’s tools and features.
The Video Room is where users can view step-by-step, how-to-design videos for students narrated by students. This is a great way for new students to see how designs are made before giving it a go.
Basic tutorials show new users how to use the app and how to create simple designs in 3-6 steps via a series of bite-sized challenges. Efforts are rewarded with tokens and level ups that unlock new design items and features.
Pro Training Lab houses fully guided, step-by step tutorials that provide superior instruction, guidance and support. Designs are created in Shaper using more advanced controls and can involve up to 65 steps.
Wondering how someone created an amazing design? You can replay any design created with the current version of the app. Users can play, pause, fast-forward and rewind the replay and adjust the replay speed.
Teachers can make their own design missions for users to play and rate. Teachers can remotely set design missions linked to topics and subjects – students receive an in-app notification with the details.
Users can make copies of designs to use as a starting point. Copies are marked with a sheep (clone) icon in the gallery. The original creator is always credited and gets their share of the spoils.
We respect children’s privacy and don’t collect any more personal information than reasonably necessary to enable them to use Makers Empire. It is possible to use Makers Empire without entering personally identifiable information. Learn more.
Privacy settings let teachers (or home users) control the size of their Makers Empire community and how widely students’ designs are shared and commented on. Teachers can choose from worldwide, all schools, my school or my class.
Some school districts and schools require their technology vendors to sign their data privacy or protection agreements. Makers Empire has signed agreements with many schools and districts and can work with you to fulfil any such requirements.
This site complies with the COPPA Act. As per the COPPA Act, this website has a publicly accessible privacy policy explaining any information is collected via this site and if and how it is used and shared.
Student data is retained only for education purposes. We do not share or sell children’s personal information or student data to any third parties such as advertisers, socmedia companies or search engines. Learn more.
The ST4S Assessment was developed to enhance the security, privacy, interoperability and online safety of software applications and services used by Australian schools. Makers Empire meets the required ST4S standards.
We provide a safe environment for users to share and view designs. Our Acceptable Content policy provides guidelines for user-generated content. Users can delete comments on designs if desired.
Students are encouraged to use unique, non-identifiable usernames to protect their privacy in the app. Teachers may wish to include specific characters to identify students in a class or year.
To help maintain a safe and supportive community, we require non-school users to become a free Makers Empire member. Members can share their designs and leave feedback.
Students are asked to agree to the Maker Promise when using the app, which reminds them to be respectful and positive. It makes it clear that violent designs, bad language or bullying are unacceptable.
To provide greater accessibility, Makers Empire is available in English, Spanish Arabic, Ukrainian and Chinese languages. Don’t see your preferred language here? We can add new languages for enterprise customers and corporate sponsors.
Makers Empire provides a safe, inclusive learning environment for students. We promote diversity and inclusion in many ways like the use of avatars, character feature options, unique looks and diverse characters in the Makers Empire world.
To support younger learners and learners with mixed literacy levels, we have a text-to-speech feature. When a user clicks on the audio icon next a written instruction the corresponding section of text will be read out.
Students with impaired vision have used Makers Empire by: 1) pairing up to share their strengths; 2) working on a SmartBoard together; 3) using built-in features like text-to-speech; and 4) using with accessibility tools like JAWS and Fusion.
Rather than a ‘one size fits all’ solution, with Makers Empire, teachers can support students to be successful via differentiated instruction. Teachers can differentiate how broad or specific learning tasks are and task content, processes and products.
Makes Empire supports neuro affirming and engaging learning experiences with visual and interactive learning, customisable learning pace, differentiated instruction, engagement and motivation, empowerment via creativity, inclusivity & accessibility, and collaboration.
Makers Empire can be used without an internet connection making it a robust solution when wifi is limited or unreliable*. If students lose their internet connection mid-design, don’t worry – their work is safe. *Note: Maze Mania, Mission Maker and Competitions don’t work when offline.
Teachers with a class or school subscription can create design missions aligned to Design & Technology curriculum for students or assign ready-made design missions by our learning team. Students are notified of design missions in the Makers Empire app so they’re ideal for both classroom and remote learning.
Our popular Challenge Courses offer interactive video content, quizzes, guides, tutorials, design challenges, and assessment tools around topics like space, animal adaptations, jewellery design & fairy tales. Challenge Courses are a fun, engaging way to deliver Design & Technology curricula.
With Daily Challenges, you can set your students daily design challenges related to international holidays, iconic celebrations and noteworthy trailblazers and real-world problems. Search or download the yearly calendar and plan your term’s activities with daily challenges in mind.
Teachers with a class or school subscription can join four managed projects each year to explore in-app Challenge Courses aligned to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Teachers receive weekly emails, teacher guides & resources. See the timetable for schools in the Southern hemisphere and Northern hemisphere.
Teachers with a class or school subscription can access the Makers Empire Lesson Plan Library with 150+ curriculum aligned lesson plans by qualified and experienced teachers. You can search lesson plans by language, grade, standards, subject and collection, so you’ll always find a lesson plan to suit your needs.
Students and teachers can use the Print Check tool in the Makers Empire app to scan designs for potential errors to save time and reduce waste. The Print Check tool helps students and teachers identify problem areas in designs that might prevent them from printing well. Learn more.
After students have checked that their 3D designs will 3D print successfully (see left) they can request that their design be 3D printed by their teacher via the app. Their requests will be added to a queue accessed by their teacher in the Makers Empire Teacher Dashboard. Learn more.
Makers Empire customers can download their students 3D designs as .STL files ready for printing with a 3D printer. Students love being able to hold, touch and test a printed design with their original, in-app design.
Makers Empire offers customers the ease and convenience of a 3D printing bureau service. Some schools don’t have 3D printers. Others like to supplement the output of their printers by using our service when they have major projects or multiple classes needing prints. Learn more.
Until recently, full colour 3D prints were prohibitively expensive. Now, with improvements to 3D printing technology and our new MakeShop, it is possible for home and school users to have their 3D designs manufactured as professional quality, full-colour models. Learn more.
Makers Empire’s 3D software is the cornerstone of our complete solutions for schools, which include professional development, curriculum-aligned lesson plans, class management tools and support. Makers Empire leads the way in terms of teaching Design Thinking in schools via 3D printing.
