A personalized photo plaque with dimensions you control

A plaque has a fixed rectangular frame. Decide what belongs inside it before you upload. One face, a couple, a pet, or a house is easier to read than a crowded group. Remove objects that will become visual noise at plaque scale, and leave a little breathing room around the subject so the border does not cut into a shoulder or an ear.

If the photo is not the right shape, crop it rather than stretching it. The workbench follows the image aspect ratio, so a stretched source produces a stretched face. A square crop of a horizontal photo is often better than a full scene squeezed into a tall plaque.

Width defines the X dimension; height follows the image ratio. Relief height controls how far the highest point rises above the lowest, and the base adds a solid backing. A small plaque needs a shallow relief so the features do not become cliffs. A large plaque can carry more height, but the stock and the tool have to support it.

Write down the intended size before you approve the production bundle. A file that looks good on screen can be wrong at 200 mm because the cutter cannot reach the smallest features or because the base is too thin for the material. The manufacturing checks and a test cut are there to catch that before the customer sees it.

The workbench does not add a name, a date, a logo, a hanging hole, or a custom outline. Those are modeling operations, not depth estimation. Add them in a model editor, keep them shallow enough for the process, and check that they join the plaque. A hole near an edge can weaken the part; a raised letter can be fragile.

If the plaque needs a stand or a frame, design it as a separate part or a joined assembly. The relief STL is a rectangular slab with a flat back, not a finished display object. Planning those parts before the final cut is cheaper than discovering the omission after finishing.

The 2D comparison and 3D preview are the cheapest approval loop you have. Show them to the customer, ask about the crop and the expression, and confirm the intended size. Only then approve the raw-float production bundle. The bundle is for the approved design, not for exploring whether the design works.

Keep the source, the exported files, and the settings together. If the customer asks for a second copy or a different size, you can reproduce the starting point instead of guessing. The workbench records the parameters; your job record should record the material and finish.