Rectangle or oval
Choose a shape at the top left of the map, then drag. On a Mac, hold shift for a square or a circle. Drag the area to move it, or pull an edge or a corner to resize it.
A piece of New Zealand, printed.
Draw an area on the Topo50 map, anywhere in New Zealand. Bushline turns it into a 3D model at the size you choose. We print it and post it to you.
Coming soon to the App Store
Try it on this page
Draw an area, then make the model
This is the app's window in miniature. Pick a shape at the top left of the map, drag it over the ground you want and press Create model. The valley here is imagined for this page. In the app the map is the Topo50 sheet, and the heights are measured ground from Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand.
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This browser can't draw the 3D model. The map still works.
Imagined terrain
64
Choose an area on the map.
1 : 67,000
0 to 2,600 m
Imagined terrain. Drag the model to turn it, and double-click it to put it back.
Land or seabed
A land model shows the sea as one flat surface. A seabed model takes the sea away and prints the floor of it in the water colour, with the land standing out of it.
In pieces
Plus and minus cut the area into pieces that fit together. A rectangle is cut into squares and an oval into hexagons. Tap a piece to make it on its own.
The ruler
The strip beside the model is the ruler. Its left side shows how much of the ground lies at each height, and its right side shows the colour bands the model prints in. Drag a break up or down to move where one band meets the next.
The size
Click or tap either edge's length to choose the size. The number you pick becomes the longest side, from 100 to 200 mm. The scale bar below says how much ground a printed length covers.
The height
Drag the height label up or down to exaggerate the relief, from half to three times. At 1.0× the model is true to the ground. On very steep ground the height stops short of 3×. Any taller and the steepest slopes would print as a stack of layer edges.
Where the forest stops
The bushline is the height where New Zealand's forest gives way to alpine ground. It is about 1,500 m on Ruapehu, about 1,250 m at Arthur's Pass and about 900 m on Stewart Island. Above it are tussock, scree and rock, and higher again the snowline.
The ruler draws both lines on every model, worked out for the latitude of your area. They are models of the real lines. Where the ground reaches them, the colour bands change there.
Natural, low poly or blocks
The style menu at the foot of the window decides what the object is made of. Each card shows the model you made above.
Natural
Every measured point of the ground, smoothly shaded. This is the style that shows the ground as it was surveyed.
Low poly
The surface is folded into fewer, larger faces. Flat country loses the most faces and the ridges keep their shape. Five settings run from the most faceted to the least.
Blocks
The ground is stacked from cubes, 64 to 1,024 across the longest side. Nothing overhangs anywhere, so the print needs no supports. This page shows up to 256.
A range too big for one print
A large area can be printed as a set. Each piece is its own print, and all of them share one scale. The pieces meet edge to edge. The size you choose is the longest side of a whole piece.
An oval becomes a honeycomb to hang on a wall. A rectangle becomes a grid of squares to lay out on a table.
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The area you drew above, cut into pieces.
The harbour floor, or the hills around it
A land model prints the sea as one flat surface at sea level. A seabed model prints the floor of the sea in the water colour, with the land rising out of it. Either way the coast is where LINZ's coastline puts it.
A bay is often only metres deep, while the hills around it rise hundreds of metres. On a seabed model the depth has its own exaggeration, up to 20×.
The lake or sea a model sits on is printed one thin step below its shore. A low beach, a spit or the neck of a peninsula still prints as land, in the land's colour.
Land
Seabed
Some things to make
Each idea ends with the settings to start from.
Tongariro
A tramp you have done
Draw an oval around the whole crossing, from the road end over the craters to the far car park. A little extra height helps the craters read.
oval · natural · 150 mm · 1.5×
Aoraki / Mount Cook
A climb, from the bush to the snow
Draw the valley and the summit together, from the forest at the road end to the snow at the top. The ruler shows where the bushline and the snowline fall on the climb.
rectangle · natural · 175 mm · 1.5×
Southern Alps
A range on the wall
Cut a long oval into hexagons and hang the set as a honeycomb. Every piece is printed at the same scale.
oval · 12 hexagons · 200 mm each
Hauraki Gulf
The bay below the bach
A seabed model shows the channels and the shallows, with the islands standing up out of them in their own colour.
rectangle · seabed · 175 mm · depth 10×
Taranaki
A volcano for the classroom
Printed true to the ground at 1.0×, the cone keeps its real proportions. Hand it round next to the map it came from.
oval · natural · 1.0× true to the ground
Akaroa Harbour
A gift for someone far from home
The harbour they grew up on, or the hill behind their town, stacked in blocks and small enough for a desk.
rectangle · blocks · 125 mm
Remutaka Range
The trap lines your group walks
For a predator-free trapping group, a model of the block on the hut wall shows new volunteers the ridges and gullies before they walk the lines.
rectangle · natural · 200 mm · 1.5×
Tararua Range
A long walk, laid end to end
Draw a long rectangle along the route and cut it into squares. Each square is its own print at one scale, and together they lay out as the whole walk.
rectangle · 5 squares · 150 mm each
The Remarkables
The ski field in blocks
Stacked in blocks, the basin and its runs become a staircase of cubes from the car park up to the ridge.
rectangle · blocks · 128 across
Wairarapa
The farm, and the hills behind it
Lowland ground reads better with more height. At 3.0× the terraces, spurs and gullies stand out.
rectangle · low poly · 3.0×
Takapō / Lake Tekapo
Where you were married
The lake and the hills around it, in a small oval for the mantelpiece.
oval · natural · 125 mm
Whakarewarewa Forest
The trails you ride
Draw the forest your trails climb through. At 2.0× every climb and descent shows.
oval · natural · 150 mm · 2.0×
From the screen to the post
The price shows as soon as the model is made. It is in New Zealand dollars and includes GST and tracked postage within New Zealand. It changes as you change the model.
Not ready yet? Save the area as a file and open it again later.
- Press Order when the model looks right.
- 3MFThe app writes the model and the order: the area, the size, the height, the colours and the style.
- →Send the order to us from the app.
Where the land comes from
The map is the Topo50 series. The heights come from LINZ's elevation data: 1 m LiDAR where it has been flown, and the 8 m national model everywhere else. The coastline is LINZ's mean high water springs line, and the lakes and rivers are Topo50's, the Chatham Islands' among them. Where a LINZ height tile can't be had, an open terrain set fills the gap, and the order counts those heights. On a seabed model the floor comes from LINZ's coastal survey where it has been flown, and elsewhere from an open set of ocean depths that shows the shape of the floor in less detail. Each order names the survey its heights came from.
Sourced from Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand, licensed for reuse under CC BY 4.0.
New Zealand Contour-Interpolated 8 m DEM: Geographx, published by LINZ, CC BY 4.0.
The valley on this page is imagined and uses no LINZ data.