Workshop Building

Making the building

    I like making miniature building using foam core board.  These mockups are made months in advance and left on the model railway to see if I like the shape, volume, character of the building.  I often will change the shape by cutting things out or add things until I am interested enough to spend time working on a final model.  

   After deciding to make a model, I use Pinterest for inspiration.  I often take screenshots and temporarily store the photos on my phone to serve as reference.  Here are a couple photos that show my inspiration.  

   Next I start cutting window and door openings to the scale size.  A useful website to convert real world dimensions is Click here. After that I cut blue or green insulation foam panels to size and glue them to the foam core using liquid nails glue.   The next step is to scribe the foam bricks using a ballpoint pen.  For me, it’s important to add texture like broken or missing bricks, and cracking plaster along with the brick details. 

    Next step is to paint foam with your favorite paint (I use house paint sold in paint sample pots), make sure the paint does not melt the Foamcore.  

Making STL files from Line Art

    The building project included balcony railings, windows, flower pots, wine bottles, electric service detail and a "goat door gate" (during the modeled period some Italian villages allowed goats to be herded through the town.  Villagers would install gates to prevent goats from entering their homes while they had the doors open to let in cool air in).  A quick way to add railings was to have them 3D printed but where do you get the designs to print?  What I did was searched on the internet for line drawings of Victorian railing designs.  Then I downloaded the drawing into a photo editing software (nothing fancy) and increased the contrast of the drawing to drop out any background shading.  Then I saved the edited drawing as a jpeg file.  Next I went to Any Conv at JPG to STL Converter Online - AnyConv to convert the line drawing to an STL file.  It is a simple matter of going to website (no need to sign up for anything), uploading the jpeg file and press convert.  Once the conversion occurs (it is a matter of seconds), you can download the file to your hard drive.  From there you can upload it to tinkercad or a similar software to manipulate the size of the file and then export it to your slicer to prepare the file for printing on your 3D printer.  

My stl files for this project

The following are the files for the goat gate and the balcony on Thingiverse:

• Power pole insulators, french doors and clothing hangers bracket can be found here: 1/24 scale telephone pole insulators by Travelinginminiature - Thingiverse
• Hanging sign bracket can be found here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6252757