How the model is made

The house

The outline, floors and roof come from OpenStreetMap. Where a house has no floors or roof shape on the map, it gets two floors and a gabled roof along its longer side, and you can change both. Garages, wings and stacked parts can be added with a shift-click.

The street and garden

Streets are sunk a little below the ground, parks and gardens stand a little above it and water sits lowest, each at its own height. Streets and paths are widened to at least 0.7 mm so a 0.4 mm nozzle can print them. Tunnels, underground parking and indoor features are never drawn.

The ground

Flat ground prints the cleanest colour changes. Real slope lifts the ground with elevation data, which is gentle at this scale, so it can be exaggerated up to four times for hillside homes.

Printing it

On a multi-colour printer, load the 3MF and give each named part its filament: base, ground, streets, neighbours, home, roof and text. On a one-colour printer, swap filament at the heights listed after the model is built. Every part is a closed solid and nothing needs supports.

Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors. Elevation © Mapzen / AWS Terrain Tiles. Want a whole neighbourhood or town? Open the TerraPrinter app, make a map poster or plaque, or see more 3D map gift ideas.