NYC City Importer for Blender

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Blender add-on for importing NYC Department of City Planning 3D model data and exporting lighter files for SketchUp-oriented workflows.

Features

• Import common 3D formats: OBJ, DAE, FBX, PLY, STL, GLB, and glTF.
• Import Rhino .3dm files through rhino3dm.
• Convert simple Rhino Brep faces into Blender mesh objects when no render mesh is embedded in the source file.
• Process NYC model geometry with optional unit conversion, origin alignment, duplicate merge, smoothing, and decimation.
• Export OBJ for SketchUp workflows, with reduced metadata for lighter imports.

Requirements

• Blender 4.0 or newer. Blender 5.1 is supported.
• Optional dependency for .3dm import: rhino3dm.

For Blender 5.1 on Windows, install a Python 3.13 compatible rhino3dm wheel into Blender's user scripts/modules directory.

Installation

1. Download nyc_importer.zip from this repository or from a GitHub release.
2. Open Blender.
3. Go to Edit > Preferences > Add-ons.
4. Use Install from Disk and select nyc_importer.zip.
5. Search for NYC and enable NYC City Importer.
6. In the 3D View, press N and open the NYC City sidebar tab.

Basic Workflow

1. Download an NYC 3D model district from the NYC Department of City Planning.
2. In Blender, open NYC City from the 3D View sidebar.
3. Select the input model file.
4. Choose processing options:
   • Convert units to meters.
   • Merge duplicate geometry.
   • Move model to the scene origin.
   • Use a decimation ratio below 1.0 for lighter exports.
5. Run Import & Process.
6. Export OBJ for SketchUp.

SketchUp Optimization Notes

SketchUp can struggle with large city models even when the OBJ file size looks small. The main bottleneck is usually geometry count.

Recommended settings:

• Use OBJ instead of DAE if Blender's Collada exporter is unavailable.
• Try Decimate Ratio values between 0.3 and 0.5 for classroom demos.
• Remove unnecessary distant buildings before exporting.
• Keep OBJ files clean by avoiding UVs, normals, and material references when they are not needed.

Privacy and Security

This repository is intended to contain only source code and documentation for the add-on. Do not commit:

• Credentials, keys, or tokens.
• Local machine paths.
• Personal screenshots.
• Downloaded NYC datasets.
• Generated OBJ, MTL, DOCX, or cache files.
• Python wheels, virtual environments, or __pycache__ folders.

Data Source

NYC 3D model data is provided separately by the NYC Department of City Planning. This repository does not include NYC source datasets.