What you get
From the bottom:
- One water sheet, the full rectangle. Sea, lakes and wide rivers are cut through every land sheet above, so the water shows through.
- 2 to 16 land layers (16 by default), each the land above its height.
- An optional panel set into a recess in the lowest land, with the peak's name and height.
Choosing the layer heights
Even spaces the layers evenly from the lowest to the highest point, so slopes read as slopes. Peaks puts them close together near the summit. Balanced sits between even heights and equal shares of the land, and Round heights picks round values such as 100, 200, 500 and 1,000 m. The studio shows the stack height for your sheet thickness.
Terrain plaques have no rim, which at 16 layers would stack into a wall round the land.
Framing is free. The preview of a new place costs 1 credit and its laser files 3 credits; after that, changing any setting and downloading again is free.
The files
You get one file per sheet, sized in millimetres, as SVG or DXF. Red hairlines are cuts, black fills are engraving and blue hairlines are scored glue guides, so map those three colours to three layers in LightBurn, xTool Creative Space, Glowforge or similar software. Text is already turned into outlines, so you don't need any fonts.
Every zip includes a README.txt with the design's size, sheet thickness, kerf, the layers from bottom to top and how to put them together.
Materials, kerf and settings
Most layered maps are cut from 3 mm (1/8 in) sheets: birch plywood or MDF for land, cast acrylic for water. Set the sheet thickness in the studio and the 3D preview and stack height follow it. Thicker sheets give deeper steps, but the stack gets tall quickly with many layers.
Set the kerf, the width of material your beam burns away, so pieces fit as drawn. To measure it, cut a 20 mm square from the material you'll use and measure it: the kerf is 20 mm minus what you measure.
Power and speed depend on your laser, lens and material, so run a test on scrap from the same sheet before cutting the real thing, and never leave the laser unattended.
Gluing it up
Work from the bottom sheet up. Sheets that reach the edge line up by their outer frame; loose pieces such as islands have a scored guide on the sheet below, set in a little so the piece covers the line once it's glued.
Use wood glue between wooden sheets and a glue that dries clear and won't fog acrylic (or double-sided transfer tape) on acrylic. Press the stack flat under weight while it dries.
Start from a famous place
Each link opens the studio there; pick your frame and generate.
Questions
How tall will it be?
The number of land layers times the sheet thickness, plus the water sheet: 16 layers of 3 mm stand about 5 cm tall. The studio shows the exact height.
Does it work for flat places?
Yes. Even spacing runs from the lowest to the highest point in the frame, so gentle hills still get every layer.
Ready to cut? The assembly guide goes step by step from test cut to frame, and the FAQ answers the usual questions.