3D model of Andrew Carnegie’s Mansion available for free download and 3D printing
It’s a rare case when you have a good 3D printed copy of the Carnegie Mansion as a party tabletopper. If recently you were able to visit The Cooper Hewitt’s National Design Awards Gala, you would say that it was indeed though, alongside with the audience inspired by Director of Cooper Hewitt Caroline Baumann to download the files of 3D design from the website.
Before you could go a little bit mad with the 3D model, though, 3DSystems in close cooperation with Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum got the work cut out with a scrupulous scanning project of 64-room museum placed in the previous mansion and home if Andrew Carnegie – the Scottish American industrialist. The well-known steel baron of the 19th century, Carnegie was also known as the prominent philanthropist of the time.
To scan and 3D print the model, which was later donated to the museum by the 3DS, the company’s designers started their work in summer – scanning the whole of the interior together with the places like the stairwells. Then they continued with scanning and linking together the exterior – the walls and rooftops. And then put the exterior and the interior together and got a single replica with numerous measures taken by a lidar scanner. Then the 3DS designers made a digital mesh to map hundreds of pictures on it, with which they got a textured model, which was actually the mansion.
The museum remained closed for a couple of years to work on Carnegie Mansion and modernize it. Teams worked a lot and mended and repaired everything, developed lights and signs and did their best to make the opening of the museum glorious in December, 2014.
There are lots of activities and planning behind the scenes. One of the parts of the planning is the wish of the museum to have a proper way to use 3D printers for something interesting and funny concerning the mansion and the museum. And that’s how they created a 3D printable download of the model. The museum suggests such designs on their web-site. They inspire and motivate the public to use this almost giveaway, which is an overlook of the excellent part of the history of architecture.
As soon as you download it, you can get a virtual tour (on your computer), a careful research of historical and architectural details, create a video game or 3D prints. As a 3D replica, the museum is equally available for fun and for those who are interested in getting more knowledge in technical details of the great house. The house was the first in the US to be built with structural steel frame. In addition it was one of the first housed in New York to get a residential Otis passenger elevator.
You can get the file in the formats:
SLT-file with a sample model ready to be 3D printed (zipped to 6.2 mb) and the FBX file set with all the color textures and geometry, exteriors and interiors to use them in games, historic re-creations and animation.