With geographical data becoming ubiquitous in our digitally connected world, it is now a fairly simple task to use that data in our 3D-printing projects. Include color photos from satellite imagery, use a color-capable printer, and you have a useful scale representation of any corner of the globe.

Commercial grade printers capable of printing thousands of colors in three dimensions are an excellent option for not only terrain models, but also for scale architectural models and visualizing product prototypes. In this chapter, we'll dig right in to see how easy it is to 3D print terrain and multicolored models from SketchUp.