This project was a set of wooden cutouts of Africa, and a variety of other highly populated/recognizable countries. It included Europe, european countries, Russia, China, India, and Australia. These cutouts, while not perfectly to scale are overall to scale and give a sense of the size of each landmass or area relative to other areas. In particular, the scale of the cutouts, when juxtaposed against a common map, show how incorrect the common perception of geographic sizes is.
The project's workflow required a short program written in Opencv in addition to draft sight, and google earth. All of these tools are freely available on the web. Additionally, a web based raster to dxf converter was used to convert extracted borders into dxf which were then modified with draft sight.
Particular challenges were cutting out the thick wooden blocks, which were necessary for this to be an effective teaching tool, as more tactile pieces are more compelling.
An interesting feature of the project are the fact that it can also be used as a geography puzzle for european countries.
