Help / Build a model

Layers

Turn the parts of a map data model on or off, and adjust each one.

Layers lists the parts a map data model is built from. Tick a layer to include it, and click its name to open its settings. The short text beside each name summarizes its settings.

Terrain

The shape of the ground, from public elevation data. Untick it for a flat base. Exaggeration makes hills taller than life. Resolution sets how closely the model follows the ground: Low, Medium (the default), High, or Extra high, or Custom for any number of cells up to 2,048. Higher shows more of hills and mountains, but takes longer and makes a bigger file. Smoothing evens out the bumps of noisy elevation data. Elevation data picks where the heights come from: Mapterhorn, with national elevation models as fine as 1 m in much of the US, Europe, and Japan and 30 m everywhere else, or AWS Terrain Tiles, the coarser data the app used before. Color by height is here too.

Water

Rivers, lakes, and the sea, as their own part just below their banks. Lakes and the sea are level, and rivers and streams on sloping ground run down it, level from bank to bank. Large water prints big water as a Thin layer on a floor of terrain (the default), or Cut through the base so it runs from the print bed up. Small water prints ponds and streams the same way, or set it to Thin layer or Cut through the base to print them differently. Elevation data often flattens a river in steps, and Smooth steps in rivers makes them one even slope, keeping steps at mapped waterfalls. Turn it off if a waterfall that isn't on the map was smoothed away, or turn off Run rivers downhill for every river at one level. Print water on its own plates prints it apart, on a sheet the model sits on, so the model needs one color fewer. See Water on its own plates.

Parks and land cover

Parks, forest, sand, rock, paving, and snow and ice, as thin slabs 0.4 mm above the ground. Placement can recess them into the ground instead, so they sit flush like an inlay. Where the map is missing land cover, Satellite land cover under Model settings fills it in.

Roads

Roads, paths, railways, and airport paving, 0.6 mm tall. Every road prints between Minimum width (0.45 mm, so a 0.4 mm nozzle can print it) and Maximum width (0.7 mm), so most print about the same width at the default scale. The mapped lines are tidied first, under Model settings.

Bridges

Off by default, so bridges print as ordinary roads. On, mapped bridges become decks on piers, lifted clear of what they cross. They are simple decks without towers or cables, and need supports in the slicer.

Buildings

Buildings from mapped outlines and heights, with gabled, hipped, dome, and other roof shapes where they are mapped (Roof shapes). Height scale starts at 1.1, so buildings stand a little taller than the roads around them.

LiDAR buildings

Off by default. Measures buildings from a public laser survey and rebuilds each one from its scanned roof. It needs Buildings on. See LiDAR.

Trees

Mapped trees, rows of street trees, and trees scattered through forests, as small cone-shaped trees. They add a lot of detail, so Maximum trees limits how many are built, 24,000 by default. Forests with room for more are planted further apart.

Other layer settings

• Roads: Skip sidewalks and crossings (on) stops every downtown street from printing as three lines. Skip driveways and parking aisles removes the stripes across big parking lots.
• Roads: Print roads to scale (off) lets highways and main roads print wider than streets once the scale has room. Printed widths shows what highways, main roads, streets, and footpaths print at, before generating.
• Roads: Cut roads into steep ground (off) builds roads on slopes over about 35 degrees as level ledges, which print better than a road laid over a cliff.
• Buildings: a building without a mapped height or floor count gets a typical height for its use, like 7 m for a house, and Default height (10 m) when its use isn't known either. Minimum height (1 mm) keeps small buildings from disappearing. Vary missing heights gives buildings without a mapped height slightly different heights, so a town mapped that way doesn't come out flat.
• Buildings: Join buildings closer than (off) fills the gaps between buildings that are too narrow to print, like light wells and slits between houses, so each block prints as one piece. Every building keeps its own shape and height, and a gap is filled no higher than the lower building beside it. Roads, paths, railways, routes, and water between buildings stay open. Try 0.1 to 0.2 mm, or 0.3 to 0.4 mm at small scales, where most buildings are under a millimeter across.
• Water: Widen thin ground in water (on) widens thin piers and breakwaters so they print. Skip ponds, fountains, and basins (on) leaves them out. Turn it off to print them just below their banks.
• Trees: Spacing, Minimum height, and Size variation set how the trees look. Turn Trees off for a faster model and a smaller file.

Types of roads, land, and buildings

Roads, land cover, and buildings are split into kinds, like highways, golf courses, or churches. Each kind can be left out, or given its own color, width, or height. See Types and own colors.

Changed settings

A small dot beside a section's name, in the list of sections at the top of the sidebar and on the section itself, means something in it differs from the defaults. So does a dot beside a layer's name, and a dot beside a setting means that setting is changed. The link at the bottom of the section or layer, like Reset roads settings, puts it back.

Reset, beside Search settings, puts all the settings, colors, and export options back to their defaults. It asks first, with links to the sections that changed. The area and its size, Build from, the printer, the file format, Filaments available, routes, and edits are kept. The message after it has Undo.

Reset all settings, at the bottom of the sidebar, puts those back to their defaults too, everything but the area, routes, and edits. It also asks first, and has Undo.

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