Boston CityPrint M-9

thingiverse

Finally, you can download and 3D print the terrain and buildings for any part of Boston - or all of it! These 1km x 1km tiles cover the entire city, with not a single building missing. First, find your tile on the map at the BPDA 3D Smart Model site (link below), then head to our Collection of tiles (link below) and look for the code ("J-9" for example). Just download and print! We recommend white PLA, 0.2mm layer heights, four top and two bottom layers, and a little retraction to prevent stringing between buildings. Or, if you'd like a set of printed and finished tiles, please contact us for pricing. The geometry is in mm, so printing it as-is will give you a 100x100mm (4"x4") tile at 1:10000 scale. At this scale, all of Boston would be six feet high and seven-and-a-half feet wide. If you print it 200% size, the model will be at 1:5000 scale, with each tile measuring 200x200mm (8"x8"). If you printed every tile, the resulting map would be twelve-and-a-half feet high and fifteen feet wide! This project is part of the CityPrint initiative, which you can see progress on at the Boston Society for Architecture Space at 290 Congress St. All models come with four cylindrical holes at the bottom. These will perfectly accept six-millimeter diameter, one-millimeter thick disc magnets when printed original size. We recommend gluing two or four Neodymium magnets into those spaces - they cost around twenty cents each from a variety of online retailers. Two will be enough to stick to a refrigerator, while four provides a nice, strong grip. Scuff the top (glued side) of the magnet with 100 grit sandpaper for better adhesion. If you print the piece at 1:5000 scale, you'll need to use twelve-millimeter diameter by two-millimeter thick disc magnets. The BPDA site already has 3D models of all terrain and building geometry in a variety of formats. However, none of those are ready to 3D print due to gaps, holes, and overlaps that need cleaning up. We did all the work so you don't have to. Just download and print any tile at home, or contact us for pricing. MiniCty offers remarkably-detailed, professionally 3D printed cityscapes for dozens of US and world cities using data far more detailed than what's in these tiles. Check out our web site (link below) to see our work. This project wouldn't have happened without the freely-available data from the Boston Planning & Development Agency (provided without warranty) and support from Artists For Humanity. The work to prepare and post these tiles was done by Suleiman Hussein and MiniCty founder Mark Stock. [BPDA 3D Smart Model site](http://www.bostonplans.org/3d-data-maps/3d-smart-model/3d-data-download) [Thingiverse Collection of all Boston Tiles](https://www.thingiverse.com/minicty/collections/boston-city-tiles) [CityPrint project](https://www.architects.org/exhibitions/cityprint) [Boston Planning & Development Agency](http://www.bostonplans.org/) [Artists For Humanity](http://afhboston.org/) [MiniCty](http://minicty.com/) [MiniCty on Etsy](https://www.etsy.com/shop/MiniCty)