Map to STL
Pick an area on the map, and MapsTo3D builds a solid model of that ground and downloads it as an STL, ready for any slicer. If you print in more than one colour, take the 3MF instead.
Free, no account, no watermark. The model is built in your browser and never uploaded.
How it works
- Find the place. Search a town, mountain or address, then drag the frame over the area you want. It can be anything from 50 m to 2,500 km across.
- Make it 3D. The terrain comes from real elevation data. Switch on buildings, roads, water, contour lines or land cover under Layers.
- Set the size. Under Print, choose the finished width in millimetres and the base thickness. Pick your printer and anything larger than its bed is split into tiles.
- Export. Choose a format from the list below.
Which file to download
| Format | What is inside | Use it for |
|---|---|---|
| STL | One merged solid, in millimetres at your print size | Single-colour printing in any slicer |
| 3MF | Each layer as its own part with a colour assigned, in millimetres | Multicolour printing with an AMS, MMU or tool changer |
| STL zip | One STL per colour, plus a text file describing the area | Multicolour in slicers that do not open 3MF parts |
| OBJ | Mesh with materials and the surface image as a texture | Blender, rendering, older 3D tools |
| GLB | Textured model in a single file | Web viewers, Unity, Unreal, AR |
| DXF | 3D faces on named layers | AutoCAD, Rhino and other CAD software |
STL and 3MF always come out in millimetres at the print size you set. OBJ, GLB and DXF can instead be exported at real-world scale in metres, which is what you want when the model goes into CAD or a game engine. The 3MF, OBJ, GLB, DXF and the STL zip also record where the model came from: the corner coordinates, the scale and the vertical exaggeration.
Will it slice cleanly?
A printable file has to be watertight: every edge shared by exactly two triangles, with no holes and no surfaces passing through each other. MapsTo3D builds the model as a closed solid from the start rather than repairing it afterwards.
We checked that STL independently. It has 66,557 vertices, 199,665 edges and 133,110 faces, and no edge is used once or three times. Vertices minus edges plus faces comes to exactly 2, which is what a single closed solid must give. The full check is written up here.
How big will the file be?
A binary STL stores 50 bytes per triangle, and the number of triangles is set mostly by the Detail setting under Print. For terrain alone:
| Detail | Samples across | Terrain triangles | Approximate STL size |
|---|---|---|---|
| Low | 128 | about 34,000 | 1.7 MB |
| Medium | 256 | about 133,000 | 6.7 MB |
| High | 384 | about 298,000 | 15 MB |
| Max | 512 | about 528,000 | 26 MB |
Those figures are for a square area; buildings, contour lines and land cover add to them. On a 150 mm print, Medium already places a height sample every 0.6 mm and Max every 0.3 mm, finer than a 0.4 mm nozzle can draw, so Max mostly makes the file bigger.
Questions
Is it really free?
Yes. There is no account, no payment, no watermark and no limit on how many files you export.
Does my map get uploaded anywhere?
No. The model is built in your browser. Map and elevation tiles are fetched from public servers, but the model and any GPX, KML or GeoJSON file you open stay on your device.
Can I get an STL of my own house or street?
Yes. Frame an area as small as 50 m across and switch on buildings. Building heights come from OpenStreetMap where someone has entered them; elsewhere a sensible default is used.
My slicer says the model is too big for the bed.
Set your printer under Print, or set a maximum tile size. The map is split into tiles that each fit, up to 40 per side.
Why STL and not 3MF?
STL opens everywhere and is all you need for one colour. 3MF keeps every layer as a separate part with its colour, so a multicolour printer can use it directly.