Terrain models, 3D scenes and printing elevation data.
Read the Standard Penetration Tests (ISPT) from a real AGS4 file, separate full tests from refusals, find the stratum each test was made in, and show the N-values four ways: by unit against elevation, across the base of a landslide, as coloured discs on 3D borehole logs over LIDAR terrain, and as a map of the depth to the first refusal.
Turn the kriged stratum surfaces from Part 5 into a multi-material 3D print of the Cotswold escarpment at Crickley Hill. Cut a window, decide what is too thin to print, build one solid per unit with mesh booleans, prove the parts fit exactly and are watertight, and write five STLs and a colour 3MF for AMS and MMU printers.
Pick rockhead and the top and base of the key formations from real AGS4 logs, krige them into stratum surfaces under Environment Agency LIDAR ground, and build a 3D ground model of the A417 escarpment in PyVista. Then test it: leave-one-out cross-validation at every borehole, kriging standard deviation maps, a check against every hole that stops short of a surface, and proof that no surface crosses another.
Build every borehole log in a real AGS4 file as coloured 3D cylinders at their true elevation under Environment Agency LIDAR terrain with PyVista, then style the same intervals in the QGIS 3D map view. Along the way, test whether neighbouring logs agree, and find a block of ground at the top of Crickley Hill where they don't.
Split a 45 × 30 km model of the central Lake District into six interlocking 150 mm tiles from Copernicus GLO-30, with jigsaw knobs and a 0.2 mm printing clearance or straight edges and filament dowels, and prove every tile is watertight and fits its neighbours.
Build a printable model of central Durham from OpenStreetMap footprints and LiDAR heights. Give every building a roof height, or shape the roofs from the surface model, remove detail too thin to print, and prove the city and its two-colour parts are watertight.
Split a 3D-printed model of Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon) into four watertight colour parts (water, woodland, open ground and high ground) from Copernicus GLO-30 and ESA WorldCover, remove specks too small to print, and write STLs and a 3MF for a Bambu Lab AMS or Prusa MMU.
Turn a GPX track into a printable terrain model: the Pennine Way from Edale to Crowden, draped on Environment Agency LiDAR, with the route raised, engraved, or printed as a separate colour inlay. Every STL is proved watertight before it is written.
Make a 3D terrain map in Python with PyVista. Turn an Environment Agency LIDAR DEM into a StructuredGrid, drape a Sentinel-2 image on it, compare vertical exaggeration and lighting, drape a GPX route over Striding Edge, and render off-screen to PNG and a rotating MP4 on Windows, macOS or Linux.
Estimate rooftop solar potential in Python for 2,148 buildings in Manchester: take a 1 m Environment Agency LiDAR DSM and Overture Maps footprints, compute roof slope and aspect, trace horizon angles for shading from neighbours and trees, build a sun map from a PVGIS typical year with pvlib, check it against pvlib's Perez model and PVGIS, then estimate kWp and kWh per year per roof and rank the best roofs.
Run a viewshed analysis in Python on a real DEM: compute what one wind turbine can see with gdal.ViewshedGenerate, rebuild the same line-of-sight algorithm in numpy, correct for earth curvature and refraction, build a cumulative zone of theoretical visibility (ZTV) from 26 turbines, draw line-of-sight profiles, and measure how much trees and buildings in a LiDAR DSM shrink a bare-earth viewshed.
Turn classified LiDAR into building footprints with heights in Python: stream USGS 3DEP COPC tiles, build a DTM and a building nDSM from ASPRS class 6 points, polygonise and regularise the mask, split roofs at height steps, compute height statistics per building, score the result against OpenStreetMap with IoU, and export a GeoPackage and a 3D view.
Stream free USGS 3DEP lidar of Washington, D.C., read and inspect a LAZ file with laspy, remove noise, grid the points into a 1 m DTM, DSM and canopy height model, and use the result to measure the Washington Monument to within 44 cm.
Stream a Copernicus 30 m DEM of the Edale valley, reproject it to British National Grid, scale it to a 150 mm print and write a watertight binary STL using only NumPy, with checks that prove the mesh is printable.
Read only the pixels you need from a cloud-hosted Copernicus DEM, reproject to British National Grid, derive hillshade, slope and aspect with NumPy, compute zonal statistics and draw an elevation profile — all in one script.
Turning a GPX track of the Wharncliffe Woods cycle route into a 3D scene and elevation profile in ArcGIS Pro.
From a digital elevation model to a physical 3D print: preparing terrain in QGIS and exporting it for slicing.