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District of Locarno relief puzzle, seen at an angle
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36 piecesTicino, Switzerland

District of Locarno

Its comuni above Lake Maggiore

Thirty-six pieces — the district's comuni and two pieces of lake — covering the lake shore and the valleys above it, at a scale where individual villages are their own pieces. The Verzasca and Onsernone valleys are the star turns — narrow, steep, and unmistakable in relief. Assembling this is genuinely difficult, in the way a good puzzle should be, because most of the pieces are wedge-shaped valley slices that look alike until you read the terrain on them.

What a child works out

  • Mountain villages sit exactly where the ground allows and nowhere else.
  • The terrain on a piece is a better clue than its outline.
  • A commune can be a single valley with fifty people in it.
CHF 15

A download, to print yourself

  • A .3mf file with the colours already assigned
  • One STL per piece, for any other slicer
  • A print guide with the settings and the order to print in
  • For your own use; the licence is in the download

What you need to print it

  • A build plate that takes 250 × 176 mm: the Bambu Lab A1, P1S and X1C (256 mm) do, the A1 mini (180 mm) does not
  • A multicolour setup such as an AMS, for the colours as designed

What would make you want this one?

Another area, other pieces, bigger or smaller, more detail or less: tell me what would make District of Locarno the one you print.

The plate

Pieces
36 pieces
Plate
250 × 176 mm

B5 — the size of a school exercise book.

Scale
1 mm ≈ 233 m

How much ground one millimetre of plate covers.

Vertical exaggeration
× 1

Height is stretched by this factor so the relief is readable at desk size.

Thickness
8.8 mm
Smallest piece
99 mm²

Nothing is cut smaller than a child can pick up.

Fit
0.35 mm clearance

Printed in place, so every piece seats first time without sanding.

Material
PLA, printed in Switzerland

Put it back together in your browser →

Every named piece

  • Borgnone
  • Brione sopra Minusio
  • Brione Verzasca
  • Brissago
  • Cavigliano
  • Corippo
  • Cugnasco Gerra
  • Frasco
  • Gerra
  • Gordola
  • Gresso
  • Indemini
  • Intragna
  • Isorno
  • Lago Maggiore Langensee
  • Lavertezzo
  • Locarno
  • Losone
  • Magadino
  • Mergoscia
  • Minusio
  • Mosogno
  • Onsernone
  • Orselina
  • Palagnedra
  • Piazzogna
  • Ronco sopra Ascona
  • San Nazzaro
  • SantAbbondio
  • Sonogno
  • Tegna
  • Tenero Contra
  • Vergeletto
  • Vira Gambarogno
  • Vogorno
  • Water body

Zoom in, zoom out

A piece of each of these is the subject of the next one. Each plate is redrawn at its own scale, so it is a real map at every level rather than an enlargement of the one above.

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