Laser Cut 3D Architectural Model

This project consists of modeling a home using Revit as a software and using Lightburn to continue laser cutting the home out of cardboard. https://www.instructables.com/Architectural-Model-in-Revit/ This is the tutorial that we used as a starting point. We worked on this project as a team, but you can do it individually too!

Materials 

• Cardboard 
• Foam core board 
• Paint brush 
• Ruler 
• Glue 
• Wood glue 

Equipment

• Laser cutter 
• Box cutter 
• Lightburn 
• Revit tutorials 
• Pins 
• Exacto knife

A properly modeled house in Revit is required in order to laser-cut without running into any issues for the future. As long as it has complete walls, windows and doors, and a roof, your Revit model should be ready to go!

Floor plans can come in handy if you’re having trouble deciding the size of your house, or anything sort of the layout. ePlans offers a variety of options that can be used as a guide when designing your model in Revit. ePlans.

It is also encouraged to create your own! Using graph paper, sketch your own drafts and bring your house to life! Notably, make sure to label specific measurements of your house, such as the height of the walls. The floorplan, north, east, south, west side views can provide as reference when using Revit.

Revit may be tricky, especially if the user has not used this software before. A recommendation for beginners is by Autodesk. They offer a free course that teaches the basics of modeling homes. Most importantly, creating walls, aligning dimensions, and creating roofs will help you model your home. Autodesk Tutorials.

When initially downloading Revit, the options for doors and windows are pretty limited. Here’s how to fix this:

Revit offers a variety of downloadable content that can help you achieve the look of your house that you’re wishing to achieve. Autodesk Revit 2023 Content.

Pay attention to the “Items contained in Content Pack” and choose for your liking. 

After downloading, open it up while in the interface of your house model as a Family. If needed, an example is shown in the Autodesk Tutorials as mentioned previously under “Place Doors” in which it provides instruction on loading families into Revit.

Now with windows, doors, walls, and a roof, you should have a model that resembles a house! 

After finishing your house, it’s time to export it as a sheet so it can transfer to the Lightburn software. 

Right click on the Sheets (all) tab on the bottom left when opening your house model in Revit. Then, create a new sheet.

A window should pop up after creating a new sheet. Click “OK”.

Now, an Unnamed sheet will open up for you. Make sure to hide any roofs you may have before moving your North, East, South and West views to individual sheets. The scale should be ¼ = 1in. which can be adjusted in the very bottom left of your screen in the 3D view of your home. 

For your walls alone, refer to the North, East, South and West views on the bottom left.

Before dragging your model’s views onto a sheet, make sure to hide the roof. This ensures that no parts of your walls will be missed when laser cutting it out, and instead, provides a clean and clear direct view of the house model. To do this Right Click on your roof>Hide in View> Hide elements, and then the roof will disappear. Don’t worry, it’s still there! Repeat the steps to unhide your roof if needed.

After moving your side views have been transferred to your sheets (East, South, North, West respectively), hover to the top left corner and click on File<Export<DXF. After exporting all of your views, you’re done!

When exporting the roof pieces as a DXF there are a few extra steps that you need to complete. Since the roof pieces are slanted you can not use a traditional elevation view. 

Open up one of the elevation views of your Revit model that gives you a view of one roof piece from which you can see its slant. Then locate the "Work Plane" section, it should be on the far right side of your screen. 

In that section select "Ref Plane" and once the top bar changes to reflect that you are preparing to draw a reference plane change the selection from "Line" to "Pick Lines" in the "Draw" box. Then change the offset to 2" 0' and select the slope of the roof piece you want. Name the reference plane something recognizable.

Now switch to a 3D view of your model and locate the cube in the top right corner and right click it. Now select “Orient to a Plane.” and when prompted to use the drop down menu to choose the name of the reference plane you created and hit “OK”.

Now check to make sure your scale is still ¼” = 1’ and then drag this 3D view onto a sheet like you’ve done previously. Then go to file→ export→ DXF while you have the sheet open. Name your piece and save it in a place you will be able to easily locate it. 

When you finish exporting all of your pieces as DXF files, go into Lightburn and click Import (Ctrl + I) to import your pieces into Lightburn. Now when you import your pieces into Lightburn, you’ll notice that the pieces will be too big to fit in the workspace. 

To fix that you need to go up to the size ratio (the two % 's in the toolbar) and enter 2.0833 into the top ratio and hit enter. Now your piece will most likely be small enough to actually be able to cut.

After scaling you model properly in Lightburn you want to get rid of any lines you don’t want to cut. But you may run into the issue that lines you want to keep and lines you want to get rid of are attached.

Find the “Edit Nodes” command on the far left side of the screen and click on it to start the command. Now find the corner at which you wish to separate two lines. If there is a reddish box/dot there already all you have to do is click it and hit “B” on your keyboard to break the lines.

If there isn’t a red box there that means you need to add a node, you can do this by hovering over the corner and hitting “I” on your keyboard to insert a node and now you can break it.

Now that your pieces are properly scaled and you’ve deleted all the unnecessary lines, you should change the lines to black(cut through the material), blue(engravings), red(ignore the line) to tell the laser cutter what to do. Tip: select the monitor button at the top of the screen to preview what the laser is going to do and correct mistakes.

Check and double check that everything will cut as it should. Zoom in to make sure that the lines are the color you want them to be and be especially careful around windows and doors. Now cut out your pieces with cardboard, following the user instructions for your laser cutter. 

After cutting your walls and roof pieces it is helpful to engrave your floor plan on foam core board or cardboard. This will provide a stable base for your model and will help when you go to construct your model.

Once you finish laser cutting all of your pieces it’s time to put your model all together. 

First you are going to want to cut the inside layer of cardboard, leaving the outside layer intact using a box cutter and ruler.

Tips for completing this process:

Use the wall that the wall will be attached to to mark out how far in you will cut. Also when cutting first apply light pressure against a ruler to cut through the first layer with the cardboard laying flat. Then stand up the cardboard to ensure you leave the outside layer intact while cutting.

Now the pieces will fit together seamlessly giving your model a cleaner look.

You can now begin gluing! Get some pins, wood glue, a brush, and a container to put the glue in. 

Begin by gluing the walls to the base and each, use pins as needed to hold pieces up and together. Try to use them minimally where they will create holes on the outside of the model.

After all of the walls are glued together, you can now begin gluing the roof together. Glue the roof pieces to each other, placing them on top of the walls to make sure the angles are right. If you plan to add interior features do not glue the roof to the walls, just the pieces to each other. 

Since the roof pieces are glued at an angle it's recommended that you give ample time for the glue to dry between gluing each piece together.

Now enjoy your completed model and add more features if you want! You could even cut it out of wood or add a garden.