MoCo 3D

Sources and rules

Sources, credits and rules

MoCo 3D is a free 3D model of Montgomery County, Maryland, built from public data. This page lists what it is built from, the credits those sources ask for, and the rules the site follows. Last checked 2026-11-13.

Independence

Independent project. Not affiliated with Montgomery County Government.

MoCo 3D is made by one person, Nigel, under the NigelBuilds name. No government body sponsors, approves or endorses it, and it uses no County seal, flag or logo. The County’s open-data terms ask for exactly that: users of the data must not represent or imply that the County is participating in, affiliated with, or has sponsored, approved or endorsed their use of it.

Montgomery County open-data disclaimer

Montgomery County, Maryland requires applications that use data from its open-data portal to carry the following disclaimer. It is reproduced below word for word.

"The data made available here has been modified for use from its original source, which is Montgomery County, Maryland ("the County"). THE COUNTY MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES AS TO THE COMPLETENESS, ACCURACY, OR TIMELINESS OF ANY DATA. THE COUNTY EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE COUNTY MAKES NO REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY AS TO THE WEBISTE OR APPLICATION USING DATA DRAWN FROM DATA.MONTGOMERYCOUNTYMD.GOV OR FOR THE USEFULNESS OR INTEGRITY OF THE WEB SITE OR APPLICATION. The data is subject to change and possible deletion, temporarily or permanently. It is understood that the information contained in the web feed is being used at one's own risk."

Required wording copied unchanged from https://data.montgomerycountymd.gov/terms-of-use (section “Attribution”), retrieved 2026-11-13. SHA-256 of this text: 31b73edc859e7f05… (full: 31b73edc859e7f0592a78156a83179cbb6f11a34ffdbd0553a80049a99043d26). The misspelling “WEBISTE” is the County’s own and is left as published.

Full terms: data.montgomerycountymd.gov/terms-of-use. Montgomery Planning’s own site terms are at montgomeryplanning.org/terms-of-use; they contain no separate attribution sentence for its GIS data, and we show the County wording for all County-sourced data as a precaution.

Credits

  • Source: Montgomery County PlanningBuilding footprints and related County GIS layers, published by Montgomery Planning (GIS and mapping).
  • Montgomery County open data portalConstruction-permit records come from data.montgomerycountymd.gov, used under the terms and disclaimer above. They are shown as “permit on file as of” a date, see the rules below.
  • © OpenStreetMap contributorsRoads, water, parks, place names and other basemap features are derived from OpenStreetMap. The data is available under the Open Database License (ODbL); see openstreetmap.org/copyright. This credit follows the OpenStreetMap Foundation’s attribution guideline, which lists “© OpenStreetMap contributors” as an accepted form.
  • Protomaps © OpenStreetMapThe basemap is built with the open-source Protomaps basemap tooling and served as a PMTiles file from this site. Protomaps documents its basemap as an ODbL Produced Work with OpenStreetMap attribution required (docs).
  • Credit: U.S. Geological SurveyTerrain comes from the USGS 3D Elevation Program (3DEP), clipped to the county. USGS-produced data is in the U.S. public domain; USGS asks that credit be given (copyrights and credits). This site is not endorsed by USGS and does not use the USGS logo.

Open-source software used in the browser includes MapLibre GL JS, the PMTiles library and three.js; each is used under its own licence.

Data sources in this build

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Rules this site follows

Model, capture and visual effect are different things

  • Model. The 3D map is a labeled model: right place, right shape and roughly the right height, built from public data. It is not photo-real and it is not current street-level detail. Paint, signs, trees, parked cars and construction that exists today are not in it.
  • Capture. A captured scene is a phone scan or panorama of a real spot, shown with the date it was captured, always. It shows that spot as it was on that date and nothing later.
  • Visual effect. Day or night, season, sky and fog are visual effects, not live conditions. They do not reflect today’s weather, time or season in the county.

“Permit on file as of”

The construction layer shows permit records the County had published on the date shown (“permit on file as of <date>”). A permit on file is a record, not a picture of a site: it does not mean work has started, is finished, or looks like anything in particular today. Records can be late, wrong or removed by the County.

No street-view imagery

MoCo 3D uses no imagery from Google, Mapillary or other street-view or map vendors. Visual content is either generated from the open data listed above or captured by us as described next.

How scenes are captured

  • From public sidewalks and public plazas only, unless there is written permission from the owner.
  • In daylight, with no people as the subject. No homes and no interiors without a signed OK.
  • Faces and licence plates are blurred before anything is published, and location data in photo files is removed.
  • Every scene shows its capture date.

If you think a capture breaks these rules, use the removal request form and say which scene.

Privacy

  • No ads. The site shows no advertising and has no ad scripts.
  • No analytics or tracking scripts. We do not add any. No account is needed.
  • On your device. The site keeps a few things in your browser’s local storage, such as saved places, game progress and view preferences. They stay on your device; clear them in your browser settings whenever you like.
  • What you send us. Only what you type into the partner form or the corrections form. These are saved so a person can read and answer them, and used for nothing else.
  • Hosting logs. Like any website, the host that serves these files processes standard request logs (such as IP address and time) to deliver the site and keep it secure.

Corrections and removal

Something wrong, out of date, or something you want taken down, such as a place listing, a scene, or a mention of your business? Tell us on the corrections and removal form. Say what is wrong and give the page address. The County may also require that any use of its data stops (its terms, section 6.2), and we will comply.