Ticino
Eight districts on the sunny side of the Alps
▶ Play it onlineTicino is mountains with lakes at the bottom, and the district boundaries follow the valleys almost perfectly — which makes it an unusually satisfying puzzle, because each piece is one valley and each valley is one shape. The vertical relief runs from Lake Maggiore at 193 m to peaks over 3,000 m, so at this exaggeration the plate has real depth to it.
What a child works out
- A valley is a unit — of geography and of how people organise themselves.
- The lakes are all at the bottom, and everything drains towards them.
- Steep and flat are things you can feel with your eyes shut.
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 176 × 250 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
Printed it? Got an idea?
Send me photos of your print and I'll add them to this page — or tell me what you'd add, leave out or change on Ticino.
The plate
- Pieces
- 8 pieces
- Plate
- 176 × 250 mm
- Scale
- 1 mm ≈ 387 m
- Vertical exaggeration
- × 1
- Thickness
- 8.8 mm
- Smallest piece
- 653 mm²
- Fit
- 0.35 mm clearance
- Material
- PLA, printed in Switzerland
B5 — the size of a school exercise book.
How much ground one millimetre of plate covers.
Height is stretched by this factor so the relief is readable at desk size.
Nothing is cut smaller than a child can pick up.
Printed in place, so every piece seats first time without sanding.
Every named piece
- Bellinzona
- Blenio
- Leventina
- Locarno
- Lugano
- Mendrisio
- Riviera
- Vallemaggia
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Land of Sky
Forty-three townships around Asheville
The most pieces of any plate in the collection, at a scale where you can find the road you live on.
- Pieces
- 43 pieces
- Scale
- 1 mm ≈ 522 m
- Suitable for
- Ages 8 and up
- Price
- CHF 15.00
Canton Zürich
Twelve districts around the lake
The whole canton at 305 metres to the millimetre, with the lake, the Glatt valley and the Albis ridge.
- Pieces
- 12 pieces
- Scale
- 1 mm ≈ 305 m
- Suitable for
- Ages 6 and up
- Price
- CHF 15.00
Zürich City
The twelve Kreise
The city districts at 81 metres to the millimetre — the finest scale in the collection.
- Pieces
- 12 pieces
- Scale
- 1 mm ≈ 81 m
- Suitable for
- Ages 7 and up
- Price
- CHF 15.00