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I see from reading here that a lot of people are using CAD for their designs. I use Pro Landscape and have tried Dynascape. I wish I could put them both together to make one solid piece of software. Pro Landscape is much easier to use and work with (in my humble opinion), but Dynascape seems to put out a much nicer end result when working in CAD.

I don't use the 3d side of it, much. First of all, it's too time consuming. Second of all, you can't always get a good picture of the home you're working on to make a full design. I mean, it's good if you're doing a front bed or something, but to do a full design with front, back, sides of homes etc., would be very difficult to do. You'd have to have half a dozen pictures to show the full home.

No, I don't use the 3d, although I like the output when I can use it, but Pro Landscape suffers in its lack of useable symbols and hatch patterns. I see beautiful designs created in Dynascape and compare them to Pro Landscape and Dynascape is, again in my humble opinion, the clear winner.

The proposal side of both those software packages leave very, very much to be desired. I use a seperate software for that.

When I started this post, I didn't intend it to be a review. I was wondering is someone has or would share CAD symbols here. Maybe the moderator could setup an area on this site where people could exchange CAD symbols and hatches.

Tan.

[ianc]

visit Caddetails.com - lots of info there

[agla]

The things that make cad drawings look good are the same things that make a hand drawing look good.

A lot of people mention that Dynascape puts out a good looking plan and I agree. The big difference between Dynascape and the other cad programs is that they were smart enough to use experienced landscape CAD people to help come up with the program rather than just plain computer geeks. There is one simple thing that they did that the others have not. It is a very basic drafting 101 technique. They set up default line weights (how thick a line is in the plan).

Most CAD programs allow you to do this on your own. Some, like Autocad and its clones, let you do it by assigning pen weights to your drafting colors. That is what I do. If you are consistant and use the same colors for the same line thickness, you develop a feel for what your drawing will look like (I'm also printing just in black, unless I do color infills).

By adjusting line weights you can make things look very different. A house is typically drawn with a very thick line. A driveway would be slightly thinner and a small plant symbol with a lot of line work might be very fine. I'll often use the same plant symbol for different plants simply by making one print with a heavier line. Having a mixture of thicker line work and thinner line work adds a lot of life to the drawing.

A great hand drawing would look just as mechanical if the drawer used the same line thickness throughout.

As far as sharing blocks, most people that I know, including myself, use a collection of plant blocks that they have saved from various programs along the way and have made a few also. I have a collection of one hundred and forty, but I only use about twenty five. These are more or less like clipart as far as I know. Taking them from other designers who have made there own or using copy written symbols is a different story. The same symbols seem to pop up in various survey, architectural, and landscape programs over and over again.

Another good practice is to use the same symbols and draw them at the same size and with the same line weight for the plant that you are representing. This helps in many ways. It really helps develop your sense of scale in a drawing because you are always zooming in and out. After a while you recognize the scale by familiarity and adding those constants into a drawing go a long way to developing that familiarity. By using the same symbols over and over, you also don't have to keep asking yourself what plant is this one or what plant is that one. Still another thing is that as your work gets built you will gain a better understanding as to whether you are drawing your plants too close together, too far apart, too big, or too small. Then you can adjust it so that both your drawings look good and the planted landscape looks good and not misrepresented.

You definitely want to get to the point where your drawing look very close to the planting at the time of installation.That keeps your clients happy and you are not put on the defensive of having misrepresented what was being done. That is why I am not a big fan of newer people starting out in the design field using photoimaging software. Many are not yet experienced enough to represent something in a plan view and often fool themselves into believing that if it looks like it works in a picture, it must work. Photo imaging is a great tool to make an illustration of what you already have worked out in a plan and you know that it fits so that you can show your clients. It is not a good design development tool to see what fits in a space. You should really have a plan for that.

Another trick that I have come up with as a time saver is to make all of my plant smbol blocks 1' in diameter. Then all I need to do is scale them up by the number that equals the size diameter that I want it in my plan. That is much faster than the questions and answers dialog boxes that come up on such programs as Landcadd or dynascape. I just want to insert it, size it, and then copy it each time I want another.

I used to use Landcadd Landscape Design, but found it much simpler to just use the cad engine and cut out all the questions and answers. Now I use Acad Lt. I have used Autocad for years though. It is not easily self taught and I certainly did not teach myself. I had classes in college and much much more training in engineering offices and design offices from others and I still learn new stuff all of the time. Most ofthe stuff is stuff that won't matter to you if you are just working in house. It is when you have to pas files back and forth with architects, engineers, surveyors and every other person jumping on the band wagon construction companies are now getting their own layout crews to save from paying a licensed surveyor).

The landscape specific cadd programs actually slow you down, but they lead you through the drafting process which really helps you through the learning curve since many are not going to find a local course that teaches landscape design on Autocad. I think these are a great place to start, but if you do a lot of design work, you might find that after you learn enough, a plain cad program is faster.

[Tanner]

Wow! Thanks for the great advice! I noticed that on Dynascape they used varying line weights...more so than Pro Landscape. I think you're right in that that may be the big difference in the design output.

I think I might try a seperate CAD engine and see what I can do. I have learned a lot about CAD using Pro Landscape and testing out many other CAD softare programs over the years.

Thanks again.
Tan

[r schipul]

Agla,
First a comment, than a question.

Unfortunately for me I learned Autocad back about 16-17 years ago. After my computer crashed 2x during my final project I took my roommates file, changed his title block, handed it in and swore i'd never use the program again.

Fast forward all these years and I keep going round and round whether I need CAD or not. I've been thinking of purchasing Autocad or Dynascape the last couple of years. Dynascapes graphics are awesome and I realize that Autocad is customizable but I've never witnessed an AutoCad drawing which can compete with good hand drafting or Dynascape.

I have quite a few friends that are LA's. It seems that no matter what they due to Autocad, the presentation still doesn't impress.
One LA friend actually meets with the clients with trash concepts and then creates the working drawings in Autocad because he feels they are more artsy/personal.

Most use the full version of AC but a couple use LT. I originally was leaning towards Dynascape but a couple of friends are pushing me towards LT because of price and compatability with other companies.

If you could be so kind to explain what limitations does LT have in 2D (i'm not looking for 3d modeling) that the full version can. Thanks for your time.