I absolutely adore big cities and New York has been at the top of my list for years. So, I decided to mix some creativity into that love and create this scene from scratch.

Step 1: Google Maps

The very first step I took was searching for a street I wanted to model in New York City. I knew I wanted the Empire State Building in the picture, so I looked around and decided on the simple street in the picture.

Looking in the top left hand corner, you can see I'm at 1 W 33rd St.

Step 2: Roads

First, I laid my foundation by building the roads. Because the street I want to model begins at an intersection, I took two squares from the basic shapes provided by Tinkercad and shaped them into a long T. I didn't worry too much about how long they were because I can always reshape the roads later. I grouped the two and changed the color to black.

Step 3: Sidewalks

To make the sidewalks, I made rectangles with a width of 2 mm and the length of the road it was on. To make the curved corners, I overlapped the 2 strips of sidewalks. I grabbed a cylinder from the shapes bar and adjusted the shaped until they perfectly lined up. Then, I grouped everything and changed the color to a grayish tan.

To make the curve smoother, I changed the cylinder's sides all the way up to 64.

Step 4: Buildings

To make the buildings, started with a simple rectangle. I then set the workplane on top of that rectangle and pressed Ctrl d, then pressed d again. This created an exact replica of that box on top of the original. I estimated the size of each box and changed their colors. I did so as many times as needed, looking at the street on Google Maps as a guide.

Step 5: Storefronts

After I had all the basic shapes in place, I started on the details, making the storefronts first.

I moved the workplane to the face of the building. I resized squares from the shape bar and spaced them out evenly along the front of the building to map out the stores.

I turned the square into a hold and made a duplicate of that square. I grouped the hole and the wall to create an indent in the wall. I changed the color of the duplicate to whatever I needed and placed that square directly into the indent.

To make the doors, I used the same method. I grabbed a square, turned it into a hole, and made a duplicate. This time, though, I grouped the first hole to the colored block inside the indent that I just made. Then, I duplicated the second hole. I grouped the second hole to the actual wall of the building to create a deeper indent. I changed the size and color of the third duplicate to match what I needed and slid it into the indent.

Using this method, I created the storefronts. I also resized and colored more shapes and text based on the picture on Google Maps to make the stores I needed.

Step 6: Windows

I used the same method of creating holes and duplicates from the last step to make the windows.

I found that the quickest way to make the numerous windows on a building was to group the windows in one row and use the duplicate button the stack them on top of each other. Then, I grouped all those rows, so all the windows were grouped, and continued with my method.

To make the color for most windows, I overlapped a layer of transparent blue on top of a layer of black.