Assembling the Pieces Post-Printing

One thing that I love about 3D printing is the ability to help visualize a concept. Yes, I said before that I love being able to create something from nothing and also how amazing it is to have a concept serve a purpose in the real world. Sometimes, however, it is great to make something just so you can see it.

I think that 3D printing has an amazing place in architecture for this reason. For decades, now, architects have made amazing scale models from balsa wood, foam core, and paper to help their customers appreciate their vision well before a plan has been made to start constructing a building. With 3D printing, the process of creating these models goes from days, weeks, or months to minutes, hours, or days.

In this chapter, we will combine some existing model information with some scratch-modeled geometry to help us to visualize a modern hillside home, complete with landscape and trees. We will be modeling the whole thing while being very...