Computer Programs For Landscape Design - 1

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

DIY landscape project

Are you in the mood for landscaping your own garden? No problem - and it is not at all necessary to run to a designer whose work is paid very tangibly. Of course, consultation with a professional designer never hurts, but after all, this is not always possible (at least for material reasons), and in any case, at first it will not hurt to figure out what you specifically want. Moreover, it is possible that you do not even need a designer, for example, if you have a lifelong dream - to create a fairy tale in the form of a cozy Japanese-style garden with your own hands.

What if this is just your situation? Obviously, before going to the nursery for plants, it is better to design a virtual model of the garden, since this will help, at least, to determine what kind of plants and landscape structures and in what quantities you need. There are essentially two options for solving this issue. You can take paper and start creating numerous plans and drawings that will have to be redone more than once - and it is not at all a fact that the project implemented according to one of such plans will ultimately really turn out to be the embodiment of your dream, because it is difficult to imagine the creation created on the plan in volume. And you can use a suitable software solution for the visual design of a garden - some of these solutions are quite easy to learn and will be within the power of any computer user (I sincerely hope that there are some among avid amateur gardeners).

With their help, you can quickly create a virtual garden project, taking into account the terrain - schematically depict a house on the plan and plant trees and shrubs around the house, create lawns and break flower beds, for which you just need to drag the necessary objects from the library, place them on the plan and indicate the age of the plants. And also to simulate other elements of garden decor: link individual garden areas with paths, install a fence, place lanterns and lamps to illuminate the site at night, build a pond, etc.

Technically, there are usually two ways to create landscape projects - from scratch or based on real photographs (see Fig. 1). The latter solution is very convenient, because most of the question of landscape design arises only when the house and other buildings have been built long ago, and there are already some plantings there. When using this technology, the base image of the house is first loaded, and then new plants and various landscape structures are introduced into it, which allows you to fit new landscape elements into the existing ones. Thus, for example, you can effectively decorate the driveway to the house with plants, arrange containers with flowers and lanterns, etc.

If the project is developed from scratch, then it begins to build with the creation of the terrain, that is, the formation of the elevations and slopes existing on the site - for this it is necessary to outline the raised or lowered areas on the plan and apply the appropriate transformations to them. Then, large objects, that is, buildings, are added to the project - the fastest way is to simply load a typical building that is suitable in style, however, if none of the type of buildings suits you, you can design it yourself. After that, they proceed to the implementation of such objects as fences, gazebos, gates, etc. into the project. - they are usually taken from the built-in library, but many solutions also offer the ability to load your own elements: 3D models and / or objects cut from photographs. When finished, textures are assigned to all elements. At the next stage of work with the project, paths are laid, a reservoir is created, decorative structures are placed, single plants are planted, a hedge is formed, climbing plants are placed on the walls of buildings, etc. At the end of the work, the lighting is adjusted by placing decorative lanterns along the paths, on the wall at the front door of the house, at the gate of the house, etc.

The resulting project options (there may be several of them) can be viewed in two-dimensional form, and then walk through them in a volumetric view (see Fig. 2), inspect from all sides and find out which option is preferable for you. Then, if necessary, you can make the necessary changes to the project, and when finished, print the resulting result in the desired angles. You can, if desired, also create an AVI presentation to demonstrate the created project (this opportunity is more interesting for professionals). This is done by setting and configuring several cameras on the plan, defining the sequence of their switching and the display time for each of the cameras.

In addition to viewing the project at the current moment in time, you can usually also see the model of the garden after a certain number of years (see Fig. 3): after a year, two, ten years, etc. - this will help to understand whether the plants are located correctly, taking into account their characteristic growth force. Less often, the opportunity to view at different times of the year is provided (see Fig. 4), which will allow assessing the level of attractiveness of the plantings not only in summer, but also in other seasons. It is also worth noting that in a number of rendering solutions, the display of a shadow is provided - thanks to this, you can adjust the planting of plants, taking into account their photophilousness or shade tolerance. These viewing options are very relevant for non-professionals, since such information (that is, data on the degree of plant growth,their decorativeness in different periods and the level of photophilousness and shade tolerance), they may not own. All this allows you to relatively quickly get a fairly professional (in terms of taking into account the biological characteristics of plants) landscape design without consulting specialists.

Landscape design software

There are many different software products on the market for the design and visualization of landscape projects. However, many of them are aimed at landscape designers, that is, they are more difficult to master and are not cheap. And those solutions that are intended for non-professionals, for the most part, leave much to be desired. At the same time, in both groups of software, it is still possible to identify solutions that may be of interest to home users, providing them with all the necessary tools for landscape design. We will focus on Realtime Landscaping Plus, Our Garden 9.0 Ruby, TurboFLOORPLAN Landscape and Deck and a group of solutions from the Punch company ! Software.

All of them can be successfully applied to create a landscape project for your own garden. However, in my opinion, the most attractive programs are Realtime Landscaping Plus and Our Garden 9.0 Ruby. The first program is supported by a large number of three-dimensional models of plants and an incredibly well-thought-out technology of use, thanks to which the project can be prepared in it faster than in other solutions. In addition, this program turned out to be the easiest for me to learn, which is no less important for home users. But, unfortunately, it is impossible to add water bodies to projects, for example, reservoirs.

In turn, the indisputable advantage of the program "Our Garden 9.0 Ruby" is the Russian-language interface and the presence of a very detailed and well-prepared encyclopedia containing reference information on caring for plants, diseases and pests. But in this program there is no shadow display during 3D viewing, which will undoubtedly cause problems for many amateurs who are hardly well informed about the photophilousness or shade tolerance of plants. In addition, the list of plant objects available for use in the project is much smaller than in other solutions, and the program is quite expensive.