Quick & Easy Topographic / Contour Vector Maps For Laser Cutting | How to | Tutorial

topographic maps in minutes what's up i'm  jonathan and welcome to maker tales where i'm   sharing my maker journey to help you go further  in yours so don't forget to subscribe and hit that   little bell icon to never miss an opportunity  to keep making if it wasn't obvious this video   is all about topographic maps but more than  anything i'm going to show you how to make this   in just about under two minutes so for this  example i'm going to be doing a topographic map   of ben mcdewie so ben mcdewie is the second  tallest of monroe here in scotland and basically   i'm just finding it on google maps first to just  get myself acquainted with the surrounding area   now the key here is this website here contours dot  accessmaps.com once you're in there all you have   to do is put in your location so ben mcdewie for  me i'm going to go to ben mcadoo in and now this   is the key part for me here so we've got this here  so there's the nephew bridge and if we go here we   can see the nephew bridges there so we'll quickly  just be able to find it i think ben mcdewie   is this right here so i'm going to just bring that  up to the center of the screen bring ben mcdeway   up to the center of the screen and just quickly  go here on the top left to edit styles i'm going   to change this to illuminated contour polygons  because that really will show off the height   data much better and then we're just  going to go back and forth just to   confirm that that there is ben mcdewey  so yes so i can see this valley bit here   is the valley bit right here so fantastic so we  know where ben mcdew is now so let's go ahead   and now let's zoom in so i can double click  to zoom on in or you can press this button   here i'm going to zoom in one more time and every  single time it's got to do drawing those contours   so i have a feeling that that's a little bit too  close for what i'm wanting so i'm going to go back   one and that there i think is going to be  it it does take a little bit of time this   but trust me this is the fastest  way that i've found and i've tried   many many websites here for this so once we have  that so we know that that there is ben mcdewie   let me just double check that one more time now  ben mcdewie is right next door so ben mcdoury is   this hill here so i'm going to bring that onto the  center of my screen and now with that done let's   go ahead and turn it back to just contour lines  and i'm going to change some of the digits here   some of the units so first of all i want this  to be in meters not feet and instead of every   500 meters let's go for every 100 so i put that  in and look there's a big change already so 100   just for the sakes of making things a little bit  more legible i'm going to make this a dark blue   and then from there here's what i find really  interesting so from my video of where i showed you   how to make thick and thin lines from just doing  kiss cuts we can now change this to have an index   interval value and let's go for an interval  value of 500 i think that's going to be a   pretty decent one so you see here we've got  these now thick lines every now and then   so with that done that's really it so now we're  just going to go here to download and we're gonna   download an svg so we're gonna hit download and  that is now downloaded this view now there is   one thing to keep in mind i've just downloaded  this with the roadmaps usually i do it without   so if you don't want the road maps like i don't  just up here on the top left you can turn off   the road maps and you can re-download it that way  now i'm going to go and pop this in to illustrator   oh i just need to get this to reload there we go  i'm going to pop this into illustrator as i'm not   that great in inkscape but for those of you that  know inkscape really well this can all be done in   there so here's our download now in illustrator so  i'm just going to quickly just copy this over into   the file that i'm wanting to work with so here  we go so we can see that it's really nice and big   now the first thing i want to do is just  quickly make myself a little circle for   this coaster now i'm making this coaster  100 millimeters by 100 so 10 centimeter   in diameter so here's my 10 centimeter circle  i'm just going to quickly change this to some   extreme color fantastic and i'm also just going  to bring up the thickness of this a little bit so   that i can really see it so there we have it  now i'm going to make sure that we have this   at the front so range bring front  and now we're going to grab this   here and we can see that every single one of these  is an individual line so what i'm going to do   is i'm going to select the thick line first so  this thick line here and i want to select all   the ones that are the same to it of course there  aren't that many thick lines so you could just   select this individually so i could say that  one there and then there's this one here it's   done in layers so it's not each individual one  so it's not that tedious so let's just do that   one more time let's select that and we're going to  select the same appearance then i'm grouping these   and i'm doing the same with the other ones so  select the same appearance and group those as well   now my dark line already has a color and the  thin liners has a color but i'm going to just   change this color so that they're not the same so  i'm going to change it to a red for the thin ones   and now i'm going to grab my file here and i'm  going to drag it down because we know where ben   mcdewie is which is right there and that's a  little large for me so i'm going to go ahead   and just scale this in now of course if you have a  consistent stair scale that you would like to keep   with for instance you were making a collection  of coasters like this you would have this   right download them all so that they're  all scaled consistently to one another   so i think that there is going to be quite  nice so that's a decent cutaway of it fantastic   so now what i'm going to do i'm just going to  select my font that i have here on the side   just move it out the way for a little bit and  i'm going to use my direct selection tool and   i'm just going to select everything that  i don't need here so all this on the side   i'm gonna delete that there all this here on the  side right to around there i'm deleting all this   right up to about there i'm deleting and all this  right to about here so there we go we've already   cleaned up the scene a whole bunch now the way  that maps are marked so the peak of a map is   with a little triangle so i'm just going to go  ahead and recreate this triangle here so that i   have it as i want it so go like that and i  think the way i had this was a width of two   millimeters is the little triangle that i've just  created this usually in a map signifies the peak   now i can see here that this triangle is going  to be a little bit too big so let's select   all these lines here making sure that we get them  all deselect our cut line here and now let's just   go ahead and scale this up to make sure that  our triangle will fit nicely we might be losing   a little bit of the resolution that we'd want but  i would like to make sure that that's in there so   there we go i think something like actually let's  go down here move that a little bit off to the   side somewhere there i think that looks good to  me now let's bring this triangle in let's see is   this triangle still too big is just about but  i don't want to make that triangle any smaller   so let's go ahead and select all these lines  once again making sure that i do select them   all because if i don't select them all we're going  to have some problems so uh you know what i'll do   i'm going to select them all like this deselect  my outer line here and deselect my triangle and   now let's scale these up just a touch more about  there yeah that for that works okay fantastic now   with that done let's replace this triangle in its  position and let's go ahead and put the text in   so the text here of ben mcdewie fantastic and  we don't need this text anymore now of course   like i said make sure that if you are keeping  a consistent scale and doing a collection of   these that you scale these all the same so  then all the spacing of these lines will be   the right for you so now let's just delete  what is left here and put that text back yeah something like that i think will look  quite nice and now while we're at it let's   select everything here rotate it by 45 degrees  to remove these extra lines here on the side   so removing that removing that there  removing this here and removing that there   and let's see if there's any loose lines that  won't be in the design at all we can also   delete them because they're just not needed  because quite frankly they're not going to be kiss   cut so with that they're removed fantastic let's  go ahead and now just rotate this so that we have   the quickest engraving possible so that would be  like that for me and with that done now let's go   and bring it into our laser cutting app so here  we are within our glowforge app of course if you   don't have a glowforge you will be using your  own laser operating app so let's go ahead and   just place this where we're going to be using it  let's make sure that we focus up while we're at it   and let's go ahead and what we're going to do  is do the thin lines first then the thick line   then the engraving so i'm gonna go and set my thin  lines to be my three millimeter birch kiss cut my   thick lines it's the same birch case cut except  i'm changing this to my maximum offset of six   millimeters and then i'll just be changing this  to my birch three millimeter engraving and then   this one's going to be my birch cutting so with  that's pretty much in place let's just move this   somewhere like that fantastic that  there is the coaster in place of   ben mcdewie let's hit ready  and laser cut this design and it's as easy as that to use contour maps  within your own creations of course this is a   very simple application if you want you can create  three dimensional maps instead of kiss cutting the   lines by cutting the wood or you can go ahead  and create large wall art with it a huge thank   you to my patrons you guys are absolutely awesome  and it means the world to me to have your support   and if you're enjoying the content that i'm making  here and you think i'm worthy of your support   i would love to see you there too don't  forget that we now have a discord channel   the link is down in the description as well where  i would love to see what you create with this   new knowledge thank you for watching  keep making and let the quest continue

Channel: Maker Tales

Views: 11,800

Rating: 4.9310346 out of 5

Keywords: laser cut topographic maps, topographic maps, geography project, laser cutting topographic maps, laser cutter, laser cutting machine, laser cut, topographical map, laser, cut, tutorial, tutorial video, how to laser cut, how to, topo map, laser cut topo, laser cut topographic map, laser cut mountain, mountain, diy mountain, lake, depth chart, topography, plywood, glowforge, laser engrave, map, epoxy, easy, vector, coaster, wall art

Id: W5WMO8NUgBs

Length: 13min 17sec (797 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 25 2020