3D print the Tower of the Americas
A free, printable model of the Tower of the Americas, a shaft with a saucer-shaped top and thin antenna, beside large buildings, roads and pools of water, generated from real map data in your browser.
Free, in your browser. Exports a slicer-ready 3MF.
About the Tower of the Americas
Standing 229 m (750 ft) tall, the Tower of the Americas holds an observation deck and a restaurant, in the southeastern Hemisfair district of downtown San Antonio, Texas. It was conceived to be the fair's theme structure, for HemisFair '68, the 1968 world's fair marking San Antonio's 250th anniversary, and architect O'Neil Ford of San Antonio designed it. It started out as the HemisFair Tower, and a name-the-tower contest run by the executive committee produced the name Tower of the Americas, which sixty-eight people submitted.
Work began in 1966 and finished 18 months later, in time for the fair. The top house, which holds the observation decks and a restaurant, weighs 640 tonnes (1.4 million pounds). Crews built it on the ground and then raised it up the concrete shaft, inch by inch, with twenty-four steel lifting rods, a job that took twenty days. The roof sits 190 m (622 ft) up, the upper indoor observation deck 176 m (579 ft), and the revolving restaurant level 168 m (550 ft).
From 1968 until Las Vegas's Stratosphere Tower was finished in 1996, no observation tower in the U.S. was taller. Within San Antonio, no other occupiable structure is as tall. Visitors ride an elevator to the observation deck, and a lounge and a revolving restaurant at the top give panoramic views of the city. Tommy Johnson made the fastest recorded climb of the tower's 952 steps on January 29, 1981, taking 5 minutes 18 seconds.
How it prints
Make this print opens the generator on a 600 m square around the landmark. Buildings print at close to true scale, so the landmark grows with the print size.
| Print size | Landmark height | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| 160 mm default | 61 mm | 1:3,750 |
| 200 mm | 77 mm | 1:3,000 |
| 256 mm | 98 mm | 1:2,344 |
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North
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East
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South
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West
- A needle-thin antenna
- A thin lattice mast rises from the top house. Print friendly adapts it to the print scale; Full detail keeps it, best on a larger print, printed slowly with good cooling.
- A long shaft, wide top
- The shaft is long and slim for its height, with a wide saucer-shaped top house overhanging it. A larger print size makes the shaft thicker and easier to print cleanly.
- Pick the detail for your nozzle
- In the Buildings settings, set Landmark detail to Print friendly to adapt thin parts and small details to the print scale. Full detail keeps every modeled feature, for larger prints or a finer nozzle.
- Colors
- Buildings, roads, water and ground arrive as separate filament slots in the 3MF. The Tower of the Americas takes the building color.
- File format
- You get a 3MF for Bambu Studio, OrcaSlicer or PrusaSlicer. Any of them can save it as STL if you need one.
About this model
The Tower of the Americas is one of more than 2,300 landmark models in Mini Skyline. They are made with AI, and each one is checked from four sides in its real surroundings before release. Everything around it is built from OpenStreetMap and Overture map data. If you would rather print the shape from map data, turn off Landmark models in the Buildings settings.
Common questions
Is there a Tower of the Americas STL I can download?
Mini Skyline builds the file for you in your browser and exports 3MF, which every major slicer opens. If you need an STL, open the 3MF in your slicer and export it from there.
How big can I print it?
Any print size from 40 mm across. The Tower of the Americas grows with the print: about 61 mm tall on the default 160 mm print. For a model larger than your printer bed, Project Mode splits the area into tiles.
Is it free?
Yes. Generation runs in your browser, with no account and nothing behind a paywall.
