Frequently Asked Questions

I don't have a printer - what printing service do you recommend?

If you search for "3D printing service," you will find many local and international options. Most providers act as intermediaries for large printing farms, offering various materials and techniques. In Switzerland, only a few companies still operate in-house printers, and most industrial providers focus on B2B services. We recommend Simon from Teil3, who runs over 40 printers in his Altstetten office and offers a simple, fast, and cost-effective service for everyone.

For international orders, CraftCloud has been particularly reliable. They aggregate over 150 professional services globally, offering instant quotes that include shipping. Be aware that tariffs may apply if you ship from a foreign country.

Both Teil3 and CraftCloud are integrated into Topoprint result page. You can upload your model directly to their server and order a print, which will be delivered to you by mail within a few days. Typical costs range from 30 CHF to 45 CHF for a 10cm print, excluding shipping fees. Please note that topoprint.ch is not affiliated with the 3D printing services mentioned, and we do not receive any commissions for referrals.

How can I change or remove the text "topoprint.ch" next to the disc?

Not at the moment: models created with the Topodisc Designer always carry the default "topoprint.ch" label. The free-text label the designer used to offer has been taken out while we rework it.

If you need a specific label in the meantime — for a gift, a club, an event — just ask Stephan Heuel, this can be done manually.

Is there an app?

Not yet — but one is on its way. Print Your Track is an iPhone app we are currently building. The idea: take a GPX track from a hike, a ride or a run, hand it to the app from the Files app or straight from the share sheet, adjust size and vertical exaggeration while you watch the preview, and get a printable disc of exactly that route.

There is no release date yet, and there is nothing to sign up for. If you'd like to hear about it when it's ready, drop Stephan Heuel a note. How the app will handle your data is already described in our privacy policy.

What happens to my GPX track?

It is used to build your model, and then it goes away. In detail: the file is stored under a random name in a temporary storage area (Cloudflare R2) so that our processing job can pick it up, and it is deleted automatically after roughly 72 hours. We don't need an account from you, so the track isn't connected to any identity.

One thing to be aware of: the resulting model gets a public page under topoprint.ch/topodiscs/ and may show up in the list of recently built Topodiscs. If a route starts at your front door, that's worth thinking about before you upload it. If you'd like a model taken offline again, write to stephan@topoprint.ch with the link and it will be deleted. Our privacy policy has the full picture.

I created a Topodisc but I can't find the page anymore.

If you haven't bookmarked your creation, you might be lucky and find it in the list of recently built Topodiscs.

I loaded the STL in my slicer software and it shows some errors. What should I do?

Sometimes, the 3D volumes are not completely "watertight" - despite efforts in our processing pipelines. We are looking into improving the process, but if your slicer software cannot fix it, you might want to use the Online Repair Tools by FormWare and/or print it anyway and see how it comes out. If you know how to automatically fix this with a Python/Linux-based tool, please contact Stephan Heuel.

What's the data source? Can you add other countries?

In Switzerland, all models use official Swisstopo data:

• Terrain: swissALTI3D, and swissALTIRegio for models covering a larger area
• Buildings: swissBUILDINGS3D
• Bridges: swissTLM3D (without parametrization)

We pick the terrain resolution based on how much ground your model covers, so that a small neighborhood gets the finest data available while a whole valley doesn't drown in detail.

Outside Switzerland, and for areas that cross the Swiss border, we use Mapterhorn, an open worldwide terrain service that stitches together around 148 national elevation datasets. How detailed that is depends on where you are: some areas have sub-metre national elevation data, while other national laser-scan products use 2 m, 5 m or coarser grids. Where no open national dataset exists Mapterhorn falls back on the Copernicus GLO-30 digital elevation model (about 30 m) from ESA. Each model page credits the datasets that particular model was built from.

Outside Switzerland, the terrain is joined by water bodies and the road and rail network, both from Overture Maps: lakes, ponds, reservoirs and the sea, and the streets and railways that suit the scale your model is printed at. The Overture layers used here consist mostly of OpenStreetMap data: its water features come from OpenStreetMap, while its transportation network is built from OpenStreetMap and enhanced with TomTom and other local and regional sources. Rivers and streams are mapped as lines rather than areas, so they do not appear.

The important caveat: outside Switzerland you get no buildings and no bridges. This is not laziness, it's data: swisstopo's explicitly modelled 3D buildings have no equivalent that is openly available worldwide. So a mountain or a hiking route abroad works nicely, while a city model abroad is still mostly a bare landscape. Please get in touch with Stephan Heuel if you have a specific country in mind.

swissBUILDINGS3D has roof overhangs, why don't you support them?

While roof overhangs are a very cool detail, they are challenging for 3D printing. Swisstopo's roofs are essentially modelled as surfaces, to use them for solid modeling (and 3D printing), they are extruded by 20cm. Now, if you want a print a model with scale of 1:1000, this would mean that a roof is 0.2 mm thin, usually too thin for regular 3D printing.

Having said this, we can extrude the roof surface to being thicker and generate a model with roof overhangs - but this functionality is not available by default. Please get in touch if you are interested in a model with overhangs.

Why don't you use swissSURFACE3D?

We have an affinity for explicity modelled buildings :-). It's also easier to process and you can identify buildings (even with EGID if you want). We also like the generalization and the ability to model holes (like in the Bundeshaus).

Known Limitations

• Bridges: We developed a parametrized 3D model for creating bridges using the swissTLM3D line geometry. We typically use a standard set of parameters, which might not always match reality perfectly. However, for some bridges, like the Landwasserviadukt, we’ve defined more accurate set of parameters. If you're curious, you can check out the overview of the bridges we've digitized so far (Spoiler: there aren’t too many yet!).
• Data status: Please note that some buildings might be outdated by a few years. You can refer to this map for revision dates related to swissBUILDINGS3D.
• Outside Switzerland: terrain from Mapterhorn — up to sub-metre where available, with resolution depending on the local source, and about 30 m where no finer source exists — plus water bodies and the road and rail network from Overture. No buildings and no bridges — see the data source question above.
• Vegetation: No vegetation (yet).

Contact

Where can I find out more?

You can contact Stephan Heuel or read about it on his blog.