Landscaper: A Modeling System for 3D Printing Scale Models of Landscapes

Abstract

Landscape models of geospatial regions provide an intuitive mechanism for exploring complex geospatial information. However, the methods currently used to create these scale models require a large amount of resources, which restricts the availability of these models to a limited number of popular public places, such as museums and airports. In this paper, we have proposed a system for creating these physical models using an affordable 3D printer in order to make the creation of these models more widely accessible. Our system retrieves GIS relevant to creating a physical model of a geospatial region and then addresses the two major limitations of affordable 3D printers, namely the limited number of materials and available printing volume. This is accomplished by separating features into distinct extruded layers and splitting large models into smaller pieces, allowing us to employ different methods for the visualization of different geospatial features, like vegetation and residential areas, in a 3D printing context. We confirm the functionality of our system by printing two large physical models of relatively complex landscape regions.