Open source online mapping programs – free software – such as OpenStreetMap or the Osmbuildings are changing the way to see the cities and the territory. When we carried out a project of architecture or an action urban planning, the appearance of the topography urban, of the urban environment, is always a delicate subject; as we present it, it will look good…etc. here the work of the surveyor or the cartography that we can use will be key.
The network offers us a huge field of possibilities, with free online map tools from which we can obtain a lot of information and that complements our work.
With the altruistic will of many health professionals topographic sector , the computing and cartography, are appearing new initiatives that promote information free and thanks to them, we can enjoy new survey applications . An example it would be…
Content menu:
The correct question would be, How to print your neighborhood in 3D?… Actually, we must thank Mapzen, which offers a free service of… Print your neighborhood in 3D! by means of a open source initiative (Opensource) based on the Open Street Map . The following image is looking for the famous Empire State with a Mapzen application.
We can access from HERE and looking for any urban topography that we want from the world, only prints as "city tiles", download OBJ file print or you can open it in Autocad.
Watch out! Only the buildings that are OpenStreetMap ( vectorized in the HERE), so we will not be able to see and we have all the urban framework of the cities.
The Osm Buildings may be the graphic map that may interest us the most… Consult from HERE.
The OSM Buildings maps is a small Javascript library that allows you to extrude the 2D geometries of OpenStreetMap in 3D and view them on maps interactive . An example; We are going to Madrid (Spain) to the Plaza de España and we see the following:
The orange box is what we can print or transfer to an editing program like Autocad or similar, only the buildings. (The orange box is magnified with the scroll wheel. mouse)
You will see that when you are inside the application, it appears the 3D Print tab. If we click, it will take us to a portal where, in addition to printing the area marked with different 3D services , we can download the file in STL format , and we would have something like…
The STL file . It is a format of computer aided design (CAD) file that defines geometry of 3D objects , excluding information such as color, textures, or physical properties that do include other CAD formats . So when it We went to Autocad and we have…
And all this, in a quick and easy way to do, being able to consult any city in the world.
Some of you might think… How to add objects or information to Osm Buildings maps? Actually we should touch on the topic of Javascript code, CSS...etc that does not apply here. But there are also other options that are also attractive and from which we can improve the map data. In this case we moved to Cartodb, a mapping application that, although payment, we have a free section that we can do some cool things with the map. For You have to watch the video HERE and things get a bit more complicated little more.
Highly recommended to take a tour of the article map interactive where we show in addition to different tools an application that is part of the OsmBuildings improving the appearance of the map.
We've only seen buildings, but what about the land. Well, there are map apps too. to obtain the topography of a terrain in 3D as we have seen previously. For printing we can access web service online Terrain2STL (Consult from HERE) where we can download the STL file of a
A bit more complicated but with better results is DEMto3D , a free software for 3D printing relief maps at low cost, is the first tool that unites GIS (Information system geographic) and 3D printing developed by the Engineering in Geodesy and Cartography of the University of Jaén (We can know more to install it from HERE) whose impressive result and which we can see interactively from HERE with explanation included.
The example is the following image of the Sierra de Jabalcuz (Jaen – Spain)
Other open source options that work with the Open Street Map and the Osm Buildings may be the famed OpenWebGis that from a video HERE we can delve into its operation.
More like Cartodb intended for maps can be Mapbox (Consult from HERE) or the Arcgis (From the following website) that have their free trial zone being able to obtain some benefit or opt for the PRO.
Remember that we have an interesting article on how get hundreds of 3D and 2D Autocad blocks for our projects And totally free!
With this article we only want to give an overview of the world of topography and relief of cities from an easy-to-use perspective in our projects or simply being able to 3D print the framework that we want.
