cespinoz-Looking Outwards -03

For this topic I chose to look through Pinterest and picked this scaled 3D model of San Francisco.

I really am fascinated by this since it is quite literally a miniature model of San Francisco. It was made by members of Autodesk and Steelblue, by using, what I assume to be Autodesk’s Computer Aided Design (CAD) program (it is not clearly mentioned in the article). I particularly admire this since I have been exposed to CAD before, through my robotics team in high school. I was never quite proficient in it, but I managed to make and print some parts, though admittedly, the process of ensuring the right calculations and sizes and everything in CAD took me what seemed forever. That said, I cannot imagine how much time it would take to make a model of an entire city to scale. To make it to scale, the creators must have had to note somewhere all the sizes of actual buildings, roads, park, etc, and hen find the appropriate scaling measurements. Then they would actually have to CAD each individual building and part, which includes drawing and labeling several boxes and rectangles on CAD (as how I remember it). Then they would have to put it all together, to follow the shape of the actual city itself, and send it to the 3D printer. And although there isn’t an artistic value seen on the model, the art specific to the makers is in the hard work to make an accurate model through CAD and 3D printing.

Here is an article about the model:unveiling-the-largest-ever-3d-printed-model-of-san-francisco.html