Help / Edit in 3D

Add text, shapes, and drawings

Add labels, pins, boxes, cylinders, and sports fields, or draw new roads, buildings, and parks.

In the editor, the tool buttons beside the model add things to it:

Add text (T)

Letters on the model, up to 80 characters. Font lists each font as it looks, by style: sans serif, serif (Copperplate CC among them), display, script and blackletter, and the single-line Hershey fonts. Some fonts need taller letters to print their thin lines. When the text is too small for one, the list and the card say how tall it needs to be.

Add a map pin (P)

A pin marking a spot.

Add a box (B), Add a cylinder (C)

Simple shapes for a plinth, a marker, or a building the map doesn't have.

Add a sports field (K)

A field of a sport at its real size, with its lines. See Sports fields below.

Draw a road or path (L)

Click along the line, then double-click or press Enter. It replaces the roads, paths, and land cover under it.

Draw a building or area (A)

Click around the outline, then double-click or press Enter. It starts out as a building.

Draw a park, paving, or other land cover (G)

Click around the outline, then finish it the same way. It replaces the land cover under it, and roads, buildings, and water still cut through it.

While drawing, Backspace removes the last point and Esc cancels. On a touch screen, tap along the line, then press Finish.

Place and change a shape

• Click where it goes. The new shape is selected, ready to set up in the card: Letter height, Size, Width and Depth, or Diameter, depending on the shape, then Height, Rotation, and Color. Duplicate and Delete are at the bottom.
• Drag a selected shape to move it, and drag its blue arrow to change its height. The arrow is hidden when the view looks straight down.
• Use the arrow keys to nudge it, [ and ] to turn it 15°, and Ctrl+D to duplicate it.
• Drag the points of a drawn shape to reshape it, and drag a white dot between points to add one. Click a point, then Delete point, to remove it.
• Follow the ground makes the top follow the terrain under it. Off, the top is flat.

Sports fields

• Pick a sport in the card: American, Canadian, or Australian football, soccer, rugby, baseball, softball, cricket, a running track, tennis, or basketball. Then click the middle of the field. Each field is its real size, so it keeps its size when the scale changes.
• On a LiDAR only model, clicked on a stadium's floor, it turns to line up with the floor. Where the floor is about the field's size, its grass fills it to the walls. On a bigger floor, like a running track's around a soccer field, the grass goes around its lines, and on flat ground much bigger than that the field stays where it was clicked. Fill the floor and Grass around the lines in its card switch between the two. A baseball or softball field faces center field from a ballpark's pitcher's mound, or else from its backstop.
• On a LiDAR only model a field put on a floor starts with Set into the floor on: what the LiDAR has inside its outline is cut out and its top is flush with the floor, so its edge is its own outline. Its Height is then how deep it goes. Off, it stands on the floor, and seating taller than its top stays on top at its edges.
• On a map data model, clicked on a pitch the map has, it turns to line up with the pitch.
• A drawn outline can become a field too: turn it into a sports field in its card. The outline becomes the grass, and the field lines up with it.
• Grass around it sets how much grass goes past the lines, in place of the floor's outline. On a baseball field it's foul territory. Length and Width, or Center field and Down the lines, set its size.
• The grass, the Lines, and the second surface (End zones, Infield, Track, Pitch, or Court) each print in a color of their own, flush with each other. The grass starts in a custom color called Grass. The lines start in the terrain's color, which on a LiDAR only model is the city's, so they need no filament of their own.
• Lines print at least 0.5 mm wide. Lines too close together to print at the model's scale are left out, finest first, and the card says so.

What shapes stand on

Everything added is built down to what it stands on, so nothing floats. Put a shape on a roof or a bridge and it's raised to stand on it (Raised by), and moves with it. In water it goes down to the bottom.

On a LiDAR only model, an outline, box, cylinder, or sports field with a flat top stands on the surface under most of it, so seating, trees, or cars inside its outline don't lift it. Where they're taller than the shape, they stay on top. A sports field stands on the ground of its playing area, or is set into it.

The card warns when a shape won't print well, for example when it's hidden inside a building, outside the model, or has lines thinner than a 0.4 mm nozzle prints.

Previous: Edit the modelNext: Smooth the terrain