Making an openwork street ornament with the Stylish Outline preset

Difficulty: Easy. Time: under an hour. Best methods, in order: laser cutting (it's the point), 3D printing, UV print (stencil-style graphic).

This preset is a single-layer showpiece: a tight, close-up circle of streets rendered in Cut mode, so the whole road network becomes one connected, lace-like piece you can cut from a single sheet. No backplate, no stack - the negative space is the design. Perfect for ornaments, suncatchers, and minimalist wall pieces.

Open the Stylish Outline preset

What You'll Need

Laser cutting

One sheet of 3 mm laser-grade plywood, bamboo, or acrylic (clear acrylic makes a great suncatcher)
Laser cutter, light sandpaper, a ribbon or cord if hanging

3D printing

Any FDM printer, one color of PLA

UV print / sublimation

High-res PNG (transparent background) and a blank - the design doubles as a bold one-color graphic

Step 1 - Start from the preset

Open the Stylish Outline preset. It loads on a London intersection at zoom ~17.2 - much closer than other presets, just a few blocks. That's intentional: at this scale each street is wide enough to survive as a physical strut. Search your place, then pick the exact corner: an interesting junction, a roundabout, the block with your front door. Stay in the 16.5–17.5 zoom range; zooming out too far makes the lattice too fine to cut.

Step 2 - Tune the layers

One layer does everything:

Layer 1 - Cut mode (outline on) with padding 20, which becomes the solid ring frame around the circle. Inside it: motorways and motorway links at width 5, primary at 3, secondary/secondary links/tertiary at 2 - all black. There's also a hidden land feature (white) you can switch on to preview the piece against a background. Every road is buffered into a contour and merged with the ring, so the export is one connected piece.

Tuning tips: if your area has no motorways, the width-5 anchors disappear - bump roadsPrimary to 4–5 so the lattice keeps some heft. If thin width-2 struts look risky, raise them to 3 or toggle off roadsTertiary.

Step 3 - Export

Laser: single combined SVG - it's one layer, one cut file. Small-polygon cleanup on to drop enclosed slivers. Add the Hanger hole ring mounting option for an ornament loop.
3D printing: STL (one color, one piece).
UV print: high-res PNG with Background off - since there's no backplate and land is hidden, you get the pure black lattice on transparency, ready to print on anything.

Choose Your Build Method

Laser cutting

Import the SVG into your laser software and scale: 90–120 mm for ornaments, 200–300 mm for wall pieces. Don't go below ~80 mm at these street widths or interior struts get matchstick-thin.
Cut everything as vector cut lines - interior street contours and the outer ring in one job. Use enough passes for clean release; openwork pieces snag if half-cut.
Push out the waste pieces gently from the back; tweezers for the small windows.
Light sanding both faces; ease any charred strut edges by hand.
Thread a ribbon through (or through the hanger ring if you added one; a snap clip turns it into a bag charm). For wall pieces, two pin nails through street junctions disappear completely.

Make It Yours

Junction-rich spots shine: London roundabouts, Paris étoiles, Barcelona chamfered corners, your own five-way intersection.
Clear or colored acrylic + a window hook = street-map suncatcher.
Switch the hidden land feature on and recolor it (#F5EFE0 cream) for the print version with a solid disc behind the lattice.
Bump all widths up one step and cut from 5 mm walnut for a chunky trivet.
Set padding higher (30+) for a wider ring frame you can engrave a name and coordinates into.
Swap exportShape to hexagon for a honeycomb ornament series of your city's landmarks.
Earring-scale dare: 50 mm, motorway-only (toggle the rest off), 3 mm acrylic.

Open the Stylish Outline preset

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