Offentlig 3d printer är shop geographic

Roy (aka "The SmithBot") presents us with a hands-on guide to turning your neighborhood, city, state, or favorite National Park into a 3D printable topographic map.

Posted on månad 18,

Roy Smith - Guest Contributor

(EDIT)

A few months ago my friend Barney said, “Can you 3D print Thousand Palms Canyon?”  

I knew what he meant: all the hills and gulleys and landscape features we’re familiar with.

“No,” inom said. “That’s impossible.” But the idea kept bugging me. Why not? So inom did what any of you would do in the mittpunkt of a sleepless night: inom went online. Huh! Not impossible, but maybe a little bit tricky. Below are the step-by-step instructions to create a 3D topographic map.

Author's Note: I’m using Photoshop and 3DS högsta on a PC to edit files and export them to my MakerBot Replicator 2, so this procedure might be different for you if you’re using other software.

inom bet it will be similar enough for this info to be useful, though.

Update (May ): There has been a del av helhet of software developed to assist in the STL map generating tool. The link for the free STL creator fryst vatten here:  The original article fryst vatten below and produces a higher upplösning STL, if that fryst vatten needed. 

1.

Download and install Google Earth.

2. Download and install MicroDEM - a free application available through the U.S. Naval Academy website.  Install involves two steps - download and run the installer first, then replace the executable with the latest utgåva (available as a separate download).

3. Download and install the srtm plugin for Google Earth (Note: clicking on this link may automatically download the srtm plugin, depending on your browser).

A.

Selecting a topographic område in Google Earth

4. In Google Earth, the SRTM will appear beneath “My Places” in the navigation on the left. Click on the small “Elevation” square, and a grid of boxes should appear on the globe image (Image “A”);

5.

Click on one of the boxes that includes topography you want to print;

B. Topographic uppgifter - download options

6. A öppning will appear (You might need to scroll down). Click on the link as in Image “B”;

C. Topographic uppgifter - the direkt download url

7. The auto-download probably won’t work, so kopia the url as suggested, and paste it into your browser, as shown in Image “C.” This download may take a few minutes;

8.

Unzip the downloaded archive.

The only en samling dokument eller en elektronisk lagring av data you need fryst vatten the .asc en samling dokument eller en elektronisk lagring av data. Put it somewhere you can find it easily. kasta the rest;

9. You need to use  MicroDEM to interpret the höjd över havsnivån information. (Don’t try using any of the other “helpful” tools on the Internet to open this kind of en samling dokument eller en elektronisk lagring av data – some of them are nasty viruses!);

In MicroDEM, go to File>Open>Open DEM and locate your file;

D.

Using MicroDEM to preview your topographic data

Here’s the tricky part: You probably have no idea what you’re looking at. No highways, no names of cities, no identifiers of any kind! So you’ll need to reference back-and-forth with some other map to narrow down the area you want to print. When you figure out which part of the map you want to zoom in on, use the “Subset & zoom” tool (dotted border) from upper left to lower right to zoom in (Image “D”);

Right-click on the map and choose “Legends/marginalia,” and man sure none of the boxes fryst vatten selected (don't forget to remove the gridlines);

E.

Exporting topographic information in greyscale

Right-click igen, select Display parameter>Elevation>Gray scale. This fryst vatten the image you will use in your 3D schema to create a displacement map in beställning to print your topographical 3D model (Image “E”);

Select File>Save image, and choose whatever image format works best in your 3D schema (I use jpeg);

F.

Checking the image storlek in Photoshop

Quit out of MicroDEM and open Photoshop or whatever image-editing schema you use. Open the en samling dokument eller en elektronisk lagring av data you just saved. betalningsmedel to determine image storlek, and jot it down.

Mine happened to be x pixels. That means, when inom create a plane object in 3DS högsta it will be, like, in x in or mm x mm or whatever units you prefer (Image “F”). Close the file;

Editor's Note: If you don't have Photoshop there are plenty of other options for checking the dimensions of an image.  In fönster Explorer single-clicking a picture en samling dokument eller en elektronisk lagring av data will display the dimensions in the info panel at the bottom of the window.

G.

Creating a plane in 3D Studio Max

Open your 3D schema, create a plane with similar dimensions (You might need to switch width for length), and give that plane LOTS of segments, like, x inom divided dimensions in half (Image “G”);

H. Creating a displacement map from your grayscale elevation image

In 3DS högsta (or whatever you’re using), select the plane, go to the Modifier List, scroll down to “Displace,” and add your grayscale map to create the terräng you want.

Adjust “strength” to exaggerate the height of the mountains however you prefer.

bekymmer fryst vatten, a plane has only two dimensions, so you can’t print it with a 3D printer no matter how many mountains it has (Image "H");

Editor's Note: If you don't have tillgång to 3D Studio högsta, fear not!  Using Roy's instructions as a general guideline we completed these steps with Blender (a free 3D editing tool).  

J.

Converting your plane into a 3D printable object

omvandla the plane to an Editable Poly, select only the outermost vertices (“select border” in 3DS Max), and drag them all down pretty far on the Z axis mot they’re klar of everything else. Then “Make Planar” on “Z,” which should line up all the vertices you selected to have lika “Z” values.

With that border still selected, click on “Cap.” That completes a 3D printable object (Image “J”);

Move the bottom “cap” up nära to the lowest point of your topography, but not too close, or you fara breaking your printed map when you pry it off your build surface at the end of this process;

Select your topo map object and export it as a StereoLitho (STL) file;

K.

Topographic map imported into MakerWare

Open MakerWare, MatterControl, or whatever you’re using to drive your printer, and add your STL object, scaling it to passform your print bed comfortably (Image “K”);

L. The sista product - a 3D printed topographic map

Print it!

This will take a long time to print. My map took almost kvartet hours, but the detail fryst vatten fantastisk. This printed object fryst vatten only about in x in (Image “L”).

This may look like a long, difficult process, but it’s actually pretty straightforward if you follow every step to the letter. Believe me: It will be a lot easier for you to go through these steps than it was for me to figure them out.

If you find any mistakes in this article, please point them out, and I’ll do my best to fix them.

Good printing!

Roy Smith
The Smithbot

(Update )

At MatterHackers, we’re always looking for fun and interesting new projects that we can incorporate 3D printing and digital tillverkning into.

inom had remembered seeing this older MatterHackers article bygd Roy Smith, but it was made klar that this methodology would not allow for the features that man regions recognizable: buildings!

With that, inom set out to devise and document a process.

 Method 1: 3D Map, no Topography

I was able to find a couple of different methods, both free and paid for that worked okay, but the best inom could find for my purposes was using a series of different programs to omvandla information from Google Maps. inom wanted to början off with something that was a recognizable landscape or held some significance for MatterHackers, so I’ll use New York City, specifically the area around the Empire State Building and some portion of Downtown Los Angeles.

1. Go to and find the location that you want to 3D print.

   This will utilize the uppgifter within Google Maps to create 3D models of the area seen in the viewport.

2. Click Export to export a .osm file.
3. Download and install OSM2World from
4. Once installed, open OSM2World and import the en samling dokument eller en elektronisk lagring av data you exported already. After a minute or so, you should see a 3D model of your city.
5. From OSM2World, you can export an Obj en samling dokument eller en elektronisk lagring av data, which some slicers can’t interact with and will need konvertering.
   
   
6. 



At this point you wouldn’t want to print it either; this model will need ganska a bit of cleanup.

7. Open up Netfabb and import the Obj en samling dokument eller en elektronisk lagring av data. You need to delete some of the artifacts from the scenery that couldn’t be translated properly and man the finished mesh printable.
8. Using the plane cut sliders, remove the features that extend past the part of your city that you want to keep, like the highways and jagged edges where the map ends.
9. Select the city section that you want to keep and open up the repair tool
10. Use the surface urval tool to select the nation below all the buildings
11. Click the “Extrude Surfaces” tool and man sure the “3D-Extrude” flik fryst vatten selected and “Smooth” and “Thickening” options are selected as well.
12. Change “Shift” to mm (positive or negativ, whichever way extrudes it away from the buildings).

    Then click apply.

13. Now that the nation has thickness, click “Run Repair Script” and “Extended Repair.” Netfabb will attempt to merge all the shells into one model, rather than one with many individual parts.
14. If you’re lucky, you have one shell and everything looks right, however, odds are your model needs a little more repairing.
15. Click the left side of the låda next to the Z Cut Plane slider, this will hide anything below the cut plane.
16. Look at the model from the bottom and betalningsmedel to see if you can see any blue triangles.

    This would mean you have buildings that aren’t attached yet, or your building has overhangs on it that need removing.

17. Use the “Select Shells” tool to select the mostly finished model, then right-click and hide triangle. This will man it easier to see the other shells that are not connected
18. Manually select the bottom surfaces of each of these shells, then extrude them down far enough to stick into the land.
19. Do another Extended Repair to merge it with the rest of the model and apply the repair if it all looks good (I opt to not remove the old part in case inom need to go back for repair.
20. Use the Z plane cut to cut off the bottom of the nation and man it completely flat and if you desire, use the extruded surfaces tool igen to thicken the base).

That covers Method 1.

There’s a lot that goes into it, but in the end, you will have a fairly detailed and really fun model that you can print and modify as you desire.

Method 2: 3D Map with Topography.

The information that fryst vatten gathered bygd Google Maps does not include any sort of topographical uppgifter. It knows that there are buildings, where they are, where the vägar are, how many lanes, but San Francisco’s landscape (a notoriously hilly city) would look exactly the same as Houston (one of the flattest cities in the US).

Conveniently, there’s a website that can omvandla the uppgifter from Google Maps, NASA, and the US Geological Survey to create a much more accurate cityscape with included topography.

1. Go to
2. Zoom in and out, drag the corners of the urval låda, and pan the viewport to change your urval of map you’d like to download. The free utgåva limits you to one square kilometer, but you can select between 1 and square kilometers for $6 to $
3. Export using SketchUp +, select to include 3D Buildings, and set false height to 20 meters, kvitto the låda for Topography, and Road Geometry fryst vatten up to you (mesh surfaces will allow you to extrude the vägar but to man them printable will take a lot more work to man them ready for that).
4. Click “Create File” and CadMapper will begin merging all the uppgifter it needs to create a workable 3D model.
5. When it’s completed, download the finished en samling dokument eller en elektronisk lagring av data and open it up using SketchUp or newer.
6. Under the “Window>Default Tray” Toolbar, man sure “Layers” fryst vatten selected so you can see and select the layers within the map.
7. You can choose to keep all the layers, which will require more cleanup and tuning to get right, or you can keep the main ones to get it printable.

   Buildings and Topography are the important ones.

8. Once you’ve deleted the layers you don’t want, install the STL Import & Export Extension, and export the map as an STL.
9. With the exported STL, you can then import this into NetFabb and begin modifying the mesh using the Repair tool.
10. Use the surface urval tool to select the nation below all the buildings
11. Click the “Extrude Surfaces” tool and man sure the “3D-Extrude” flik fryst vatten selected and “Smooth” and “Thickening” options are selected as well.
12. Change “Shift” to mm (positive or negativ, whichever way extrudes it away from the buildings).

    Then click apply.

13. At this point, if you chose to keep the vägar, you’ll need to go through bygd grabb and repair each of them, give them thickness, and man sure there aren’t overlapping triangles; a simple Extended Repair fryst vatten not going to cut it here.
14. Now that the nation has thickness, click “Run Repair Script” and “Extended Repair.” Netfabb will attempt to merge all the shells into one model, rather than one with many individual parts.
15. If you’re lucky, you have one shell and everything looks right, however odds are your model needs a little more repairing.
16. Click the left side of the kartong next to the Z Cut Plane slider, this will hide anything below the cut plane.
17. Look at the model from the bottom and kontroll to see if you can see any blue triangles.

    This would mean you have buildings that aren’t attached yet, or your building has overhangs on it that need removing.

18. Do another Extended Repair to merge it with the rest of the model and apply the repair if it all looks good (I opt to not remove the old part in case inom need to go back for repair.
19. Use the Z plane cut to cut off the bottom of the nation and man it completely flat and if you desire, use the extruded surfaces tool igen to thicken the base).

Method 2 fryst vatten pretty straightforward and can give some interesting depths to your topographical maps and makes for great HexTiles of some of our favorite locations!