Hi, I’ve downloaded the elevation data for Wimbledon Hill as I want to CNC mill a model of it. I’ve got it in three forms, a JSON, a KML and a TIFF. And it consists of about 16,000 data points.
Does anyone know the best way to get one of these into Fusion 360?
Cheers,
Will
Hey Will,
I use some elevation data to create a model on the MiniCNC - MiniCNC experiments
Once I had the elevation data I used this project to create the binary STL which I could then import into Fusion360.
Hope that helps, give me a shout if you need any help
Thanks. I got my elevation data from Topographic Map. https://tessadem.com/api/elevation? parameters
It offers JSON, KML and GeoTiff, but I can’t get them into heightmap meshing utility. The Tiff doesn’t even seem to show much apart from plain white.
elevation request draft 2.tif (62.6 KB)
Any ideas for moving forward? It could be just the file incompatibility between the GeoTiff and HMM. I think it’s a 32 bit image.
Yeah I can’t see much data in that uploaded TIF at all.
I normally use the Terrain Tiles dataset on Amazon’s S3 for elevation data. I’m not sure if you’re familar with GDAL? You can add the S3 dataset as a datasource and then use gdal_translate to generate an elevation PNG of any area.
I run GDAL via Docker as I’ve had problems in the past with getting it installed.
I grabbed the coordinates of the area that I think you’re interested from the TIF you uploaded (using gdalinfo), and the command to generate a PNG of elevation data for this area would be:
docker run -v $(pwd):/gdal -w /gdal geographica/gdal2 gdal_translate -ot UInt16 -projwin -0.3084868 51.4700869 -0.1947712 51.4055506 -projwin_srs EPSG:4326 -outsize 315 0 elevation.xml out.png
Each time I try and attach the resulting PNG to this post it doesn’t work as discourse is converting it to a JPG 
This PNG can be fed to hmm though and it produces an STL (quite a big one, so here is one which has been simplified and scaled).
I applied a bit of z-axis exaggeration when generating the STL with hmm as the area is quite flat.
scale.stl (2.9 MB)
Thanks. I’ll have a go with that.
Will
The GeoTIFF file isn’t meant to be viewed as an image, basically each pixel represents the height at that point, and you need to import it into something like QGIS to view properly.
I think once you get it into QGIS you can export it in a standard 3d model format using these instructions: https://giscrack.com/how-to-make-a-3d-model-in-qgis-using-the-qgis2threejs-extension/
And then the output can be fed into Fusion360 (and slicers for 3D printing too)
I haven’t used the tool myself but I have it bookmarked for a project of mine: https://touchterrain.geol.iastate.edu/
It should give you an stl of anywhere on earth
Oh easy!
@Kyle seem to remember you did a video tutorial on exporting from Fusion 360 to GCode for the desktop CNC. Do you have a link?
