Landscape Exercise 06 – Proposed Plant Legend

Now select the Proposed Plant Legend icon to reveal another powerful landscaping aid.

This tool allows us to automatically generate a legend for the proposed plants in the drawing and containing only the field we specify from all the available fields in the Excel database.

Select the schedule type called My Schedule 1 from the available list. It should display botanical name, abbreviation, common name and type as shown here.
Select OK and follow the prompt by locating a position for the top left of the legend somewhere in your Top view

Your legend will look similar to this one although more complete.

Repeat the command, only this time tick the Show Auto Labels option to include a list of all the Auto Number labels.

The legend only updates when you choose to rerun it. So if you add or delete plants from your drawing you should rerun the command to update the quantities.The text and line work in the legend are not grouped or locked in any way so it is easy to select and edit as desired.

Plant Legends can also be placed in the composed view, just as we did with the existing tree schedule. Just be sure to set the Row Height size to suite the paper size and not the land size!

The legend is automatically inserted on layer 999 and so any entities that are on that layer (such as the dotted guide lines of the template) will be deleted when you use this command!

You can produce more than one Proposed Plant Legend in your drawing by moving the legend to another layer and running the command again.

It is well worth referring to the LANDWorksCAD Reference Manual for a full explanation of each option of this command.

By ticking the Export option you can create an excel file of your plant legend to send to nurseries for pricing purposes or to use in other documentation.

If you select the Group By option and select Type, your plants will be grouped into Trees, Shrubs, Ground Covers etc.

Notes

Landscape Exercise 07 – Plant Display Switching

LANDWorksCAD allows users to instantly change the appearance of their drawings without the need to manually change the drawing. Many clients use this ability to create detailed Planting plans from initial Concept plans, switching the plants from detailed to simple to image formats and adding automated shadows where desired.

Start a new drawing
Use the Insert Proposed Plant tool to insert a range of about five Euonymus fortune as shown here.
Now select the Plant Display Switching
Select the Show Basic Component option and OK.
Say Yes to the next dialog asking if you should Modify all Plants?

The plants will switch to the basic version

Now repeat the Plant Display Switching tool
This time select Show Bitmap Images

Again, the plant display will switch from line drawings to image files as shown here.

Repeat the Plant Display Switching tool again
Set the Show Shadows option
From the drop-down list set the Shadow Style to Grey_Fill and click OK
Repeat the Plant Display Switching tool again
Set the Show Detailed Components option and

As with all the previous commands, try each of the options out to see what they do and if in doubt ask your tutor or email support@cad.com.au

Landscape Exercise 08 – Plane Modifiers

Check out the Planes menu.

These tools are extremely useful when working with planes as they provide a higher level of flexibility and save a great deal of time. We will explore the four tools highlighted above.

Begin by switching the group of plants from the previous exercise to display them as Basic Components so they look more simplified.
Now select the White Out
Click your way around the inside of the trees as shown to cover the interior of the grouping.
When you get to the last point, right-click and select Done from the menu that appears at your cursor.

A white plane is inserted with a white boundary curve (curve has a degree of only 1 so it appears as straight lines) and unlike the normal insertion of planes, whiteout planes are automatically arranged to the front and thus cover the entities beneath them. The advantage of this is that the entities themselves remain whole and complete.

Select any one of the trees to see that it is still intact.
Do modify the outline of the whiteout you need to select the curve and drag its nodes to the desired location. The outline curve can be difficult to locate as it is white.

Change the background colour to better see where you’ve placed whiteout.

Tip

Whiteout can be used to cover areas of an imported file too. The defining outline can also be modified in the same way as any other curve.

Whiteout can also have transparency applied by double clicking on the inserted plane, selecting Change, and then setting the transparency value from 0.1 to 0.9 This will then show partial information underneath the plane

When you’ve finished playing, draw the following outline (or similar) using Insert Line. Be sure to have a couple of the lines overshoot each other as shown.
Now use Options, Plane to set your planes to Solid Fill.
Change your current colour to something pleasant J
Use the standard Insert Plane by Boundary Points command to insert a new plane from one corner to another around the outline, BUT ‘accidentally’ miss one or two corner points, just as you might on a real job!
Now select the Add Vertex command from the toolbar and click on the edge of the plane between vertex A and B (your example may be a little different so just pick an edge that needs to be divided).
Move the new vertex that you now have at your cursor to point C
Repeat for point D and E
Select the Move Vertex tool and select a vertex that needs moving. Relocate it in the correct position. The cursor should indicate end points and intersections etc.
Use Add Vertex to complete the shape and then try Delete Vertex on existing vertices to see how it works.

As you can see, this tool gives you great control over the shape of your hatching without having to delete and reinsert.

Edge modification only works on straight edges. Edges comprising of curves or arcs cannot be edited in this way.

The current Whiteout planes are bounded by a curve entity so cannot be modified by these plane vertex tools.

Edgy

Landscape Design Tips

The following section provides some additional landscape drawing design tips that you may adopt to improve the appearance of your CAD based drawings and to add a greater level of professionalism.

Design Tip #1

Vary the size, position and rotation of plants to provide a more relaxed natural appearance

Design Tip #2

Add shadows to larger plants to provide a greater sense of depth.

Design Tip #3

Use Haloing on Text for clarity when placed in detailed areas

Design Tip #4

Tree branches and other elements can adopt a halo effect by duplicating them in a heavier white line weight placed directly beneath the primary object but on top of the underlying objects.

The simplest way to do this for a tree is to copy the desired tree to a blank space on the drawing, explode it, then remove unwanted planes and plane outlines, then change the remaining branch lines to colour 255 (white) and heavy ( 1mm-3mm). It is also good to create a Group from these lines so they are easy to manoeuvre. You will also need to use the Arrange command to get them in the correct order under the main Component and on top of the background entities.

Design Tip #5

Set planting bed edges and pot edges as dashed lines when under a tree to differentiate them.

Design Tip #6

Use varying line weights to give depth and dominance to chosen aspects of the drawing.

Design Tip #7

Be sure to have White, Solid-Fill Planes inside Components or object that you place on top of paving or other hatched areas. This will then automatically hide the hatching beneath the object.

You can add the white planes to Components in the library and resave them so they are always available to you for future drawings. Just File, Open the desired Components, add the planes and File-save or File Save-as.

Design Tip #8

When drawing steps in plan, add heavier shadow lines and if using hatch patterns, separate the steps with a gap for added definition.

Design Tip #9

Don’t use too much pattern style hatching in large areas when small non-uniform patches of hatching may give a more pleasing result.

Design Tip #10

Use multiple overlapping planes to create different and effective regions.

Design Tip #11

Include photographs of your plants or special features as part of your Layout views for greatly improved understanding of your designs.

Design Tip #12

Use dashed Lines for unfenced boundary lines, hidden items such as furniture under a pergola roof and eaves lines of roofs where they must be shown but not dominate.

Design Tip #13

Convert straight lines into Curves using the Convert to Curve command and then drag the control points to give a more freehand relaxed feel to the design.

You can also achieve a similar result by exporting a DXF or DWG file to special CAD to Sketch software available via www.cad.com.au

Design Tip #14

Use varying line weights and less rigid line work for landforms such as battered banks, cliffs and escarpments. Insert a Ruled Surface entity between two curves for rapid curve contours.

Design Tip #15

Use varying hatch density to delineate the sunny side of objects vs. shaded sides.

Design Tip #16

Offset the boundary and fill each strip with ever decreasing hatch density to simulate simple lawn areas without the hatching dominating the design. Make the offset entities white

Design Tip #17

Insert multiple layers of Solid-Fill transparent white coloured Planes in between images to provide a misty look and create a sense of depth in elevations. Or use a variety of images with different levels of colour depth with the most colour-saturated in the foreground. Set images to have transparent backgrounds.

Design Tip #18

Place a solid-fill, white surface plane into rock Components to make them easy to arrange and change around. Scale, mirror and rotate them differently for best effect.

Design Tip #19

Draw your own Components and save them into your own library to ensure your drawings are uniquely yours. It is worth taking the time to do this and it will be rewarding when you see your own work in your drawings.

If you’re good at drawing with a pencil or pen, then draw your Components manually on paper first, scan them and insert them into LANDWorksCAD as images, and then use the CAD tools to trace over them. In this way your hand drawing talents are being replicated by the software for you. You can also get CAD International to do this for you if you supply them your images.

Design Tip # 20

You can purchase and download CAD or image files for use with LANDWorksCAD. If you’ve already developed a library of CAD symbols using other software you can import them into your LANDWorksCAD library. CAD International will do this for you on request.

Congratulations – Course Complete

You’ve now completed the Landscape component of the CAD Certificate courses using most of the tools in the landscape application. From here you’ll be able to develop your skills as you use the program to produce real drawings.

If you need to refresh your memory, refer back to the exercises you’ve completed and remember to contact support@cad.com.au if you need to ask questions about how to use the software.

Review the reference manual and the online videos for a more in-depth understanding.

If you’ve enjoyed this course or would like to offer constructive comment, our team would love to hear from you. Please email the team info@cad.com.au

But wait there’s more…

If you wish to progress to more advanced topics contact CAD International for details on how to enrol info@cad.com.au