As a 2015 Christmas present to my parents, I made a custom topographical relief map of their home, Puerto Rico.

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The process starts by downloading data from the USGS (United States Geographical Survey). I select the area I would like to download data for. Depending on the size of the area I want to make a relief map for, their are several resolutions available (a data point every 9 feet, to a data point every 300 feet). Using the open source program Qgis I convert this data from the USGS into xyz data. That is, Latitude, Longitude, and Elevation. 

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Using input that I specify at the beginning of the program, (scale of elevation, how large of a map I would like, how big is the raw material sheet) the program turns the XYZ data into an AutoCAD script. This AutoCAD script draws every elevation point for one latitude, this is called one slat, it will then draw all the elevation points for the next latitude in line. 

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The end result is an AutoCAD file with 50-400 slats (depending on size of map) organized for cutting on a laser cutter. Once cut, the slats are turned on end and sandwiched together to create a full map.

 

Some other interesting points of note:

• The faster the laser cutter cuts, the lighter the burn is. This was discovered after the Puerto Rico map was finished. For the Kodiak Station map, I had the program color any lines drawn that represented water, blue, and any lines that represented land, red.  The laser cutter had settings that could cut at different speeds for different colors in the file. This gave a good distinction between land and water, as seen in the Kodiak map.

• The program engraves numbers on each slat to allow for easier assembly once all the slats are dumped into a pile.

• The distance between each point is different at different latitudes, to ensure that the scale is kept true, my program calculates the distance between two longitude points at the beginning of the program to ensure scale is kept. (distance between Longitude points varies depending how far north of the equator the measurement is taken)

• Maps from the USGS are usually large squares of land, I only want a portion of the given data, so I give the program four coordinates and tell it to keep any data within the square and discard the rest. This allows for FULL customization of map locations.

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