Talk:Raised-relief map

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We manufacture these raised-relief maps using the above process. Is it OK to post a link to hubbardscientific.com? I could also post pictures of the actual process of vacuum forming the maps over a form if needed.

how does high hills affect the runoff of water

3d-printing as source for raised-relief maps

The decreasing cost and increasing access to 3D printers is opening up the technology to 3d-printed raised-relief maps. Two notable creators are terrainator.com and tinymtn.com - both sites that do their final sales through Shapeways. The maps have more detail than the generally-larger-scale maps produced by vacuum-forming, but can cover less area, and are more expensive. In the interests of disclosure, I started tinymtn.com as a hobby a few months ago to raise the awareness (no pun intended) of 3D printing of maps. I think a subsection on the same level as "Vacuum formed models" called "3D printed models" should be created, listing the pros and cons of the technology, linking to the larger "3D printing" page, and (I would hope) also linking to the several vendors of 3D printed maps. Markstock (talk) 13:30, 18 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Fortunately, Wikipedia isn't a place to advertise your companies or your projects. But thank you for raising "Vacuum formed models", because I can see it is clearly an advert cited to the American Educational Products LLC website - I'll remove it. Sionk (talk) 18:19, 18 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Do you think it's appropriate to at least list "vacuum forming", "3d printing", and "CNC milling" in the "Construction methods" section? If one read only this page, it would not be obvious that there existed construction methods other than assembling individually-cut layers. Markstock (talk) 22:40, 18 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You may have a good point there. That paragraph has been there since the article was created and, like you say, only gives one very specific example of how terrain models are made. The Scotland Map mentioned further down is made from bricks and concrete! Sionk (talk) 23:54, 18 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Common vertical exaggeration

Since we're both here, it's probably important to note this sentence from the first paragraph: "When representing terrain, the elevation dimension is usually exaggerated by a factor between five and ten; this facilitates the visual recognition of terrain features." While this is true for most vacuum-formed maps, it is obviously not true for many hand-made and almost all architectural and small-scale maps, notably the one pictured at the top of the page itself. A more-helpful sentence might state that "the elevation dimension is commonly exaggerated..." Maybe I'm being nit-picky, but I am seeing them more often now than the exaggerated variety. Markstock (talk) 22:55, 18 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]