See the buildings around your site in 3D, so you can judge massing, height, and overshadowing in context before you test a scheme. The 3D Buildings layer is the white building masses you see around your site in most projects. It adds extruded building shapes to the map for most cities in the world.
Find the 3D Buildings layer
New projects include the 3D Buildings layer in the Basemap group of the Layer Palette. Turn it on or off there to show or hide surrounding buildings.
Where the building data comes from
The 3D Buildings layer uses the building footprints and heights in the Mapbox Streets building data, which is built from OpenStreetMap. OpenStreetMap is a free map that volunteers around the world draw and update.
Recolor and restyle the buildings
Open the 3D Buildings layer's style settings to change how the buildings look. The layer type is 3D, which extrudes each footprint to its height.
Choose color: paint every building one color. The default is white.
Property to read: color each building by one of its properties instead, such as its height.
Opacity: make the buildings see-through so your own design stands out.
Set the height keys
Two settings tell Giraffe which building properties set the height of each building:
Height key: the property for the top of each building. The default is
height.Base height key: the property for where each building starts above the ground. The default is
base_height. The OpenStreetMap data stores this asmin_height, so the buildings start at ground level until you set Base height key tomin_height.Scaling (1 for meters): multiplies the height values. Leave it at 1, since the data is in meters.
Set Base height key to min_height to lift upper parts of a building, such as a tower above a podium or an overhang, off the ground.
Why buildings may not match the real world
The 3D Buildings layer shows what OpenStreetMap volunteers have mapped. Treat it as context, and check against survey data before you rely on a height for a planning decision.
Some buildings have no height recorded, so they show at an estimated height.
New buildings may be missing, and demolished buildings may still show.
Footprints are often simplified, so a complex building can look like a single box.
Coverage is better in big cities than in suburbs and rural areas.
You can fix a building in OpenStreetMap itself. Changes reach Giraffe once the map data updates.
Hide the existing buildings on your site so they don't clash with your design. Learn how to clear existing 3D buildings from your site.