The aim of this assignment was to create a foam model of our barrio using the CNC Milling machine. We first prepared a 2d rhino file of our barrio which had to be printed in the laser cutter at the scale of 1:5000 and on which we discussed and examined various issues concerning the 3d printing process and the way of union the different barrios (boarders, designing methods etc.). The file comprised the streets, the blocks and the buildings, all organized in one layer in order to be engraved. The boarders of the barrio were organized in a second layer determining the cutting lines.

We created the 3d rhino file using the required information from the web and we organized the buildings in layers, according to the number of floors of each building, giving finally the corresponding height. We added the 3 cm base of the model and the 2 mm height sidewalks and we changed the scale into 1:2000. We converted the polysurfaces into meshes and union them all together.

A barrio (Camp de l’ Arpa) that has not been previously allocated to any of the groups was added to ours a posteriori. Finally, the model was printed successfully in one piece. Because of the different height of the materials, we had to cut our piece through horizontally manually, in order to fit with the neighbor areas.

The digital design process

The fabrication process in CNC Milling machine & the final model

Team: Ayber Gülfer, Morten Bülow & Manuel Huerta
Barrio: Poble Nou

View the process here

As an overall analysis of Design Studio I “ZEBAR” Project, the assignment claimed for a 3D model of Barcelona.  Following the admistrative subdivisions of the city, a digital 2D CAD format map was created by tracing closed polylines for streets, blocks and buildings.  It was decided that the entire city would be considered flat and only the topography of the most important mountains (Montjuic, Collserola, El Carmel) would be shown since the scale is 1:2000 and not all details would be seen.

Rhino file

Therefore, the printing was separated into 2 parts, the flat and the topography, in our case Ronda del Dalt street was the subdivision element. Having decided that, the extrusion of all the buildings was done considering that each floor is 3.5m high. The blocks were extruded to a 0.3cm height and the base 3cm due to the thickness of the material.  After receiving the topography treated with RhinoTerrain plugin, we had to place the buildings on it. We placed them above the terrain and then individually chose Curve>Curve from Objects>Duplicate Edges. Selecting each edge of the base of the building, we joined the lines and hit Project. Click on the terrain to project the curve on the topography. Then we moved vertically the building to the lowest point in the terrain so the building would be placed inside it.Then “Boolean union” all the buildings, blocks, and streets in order to create one single object. Eventually Create a mesh of the object by applying the command “mesh” and place the model on a sheet size is 1990 x 990 mm. Since our barrio is a big area, we have to split the area into 2 parts in order to fit into the sheet.

Buildings on Collserola Mountain

In order to materialize the 3d model we chose foam and milled with the CNC milling machine. The file was first prepared to be read by the machine through a simulation of the milling using Rhino Cam. To start milling, we used 2 tools with different diameters. First 3cm tool to take out the excessive material, and then 26mm to give detail into the map.

Foam Model milled with different tools

Saint Gervasi milled

During the milling process, the northern part of our area was only engraved and not milled. After sometime working on the file to find the mistake we realized that some meshes were open and invalid through the command Analyze>Edge Tools> Show Edges. We used the command CloseCrv to close all the polylines and redid the extrusions and meshes. Finally with Command “What” we knew there was no more invalid meshes and the file was ready to be reprinted.