The first stage in this project involves creating two CAD drawings, each for a landscape design in an area 10 meters wide by 13 meters deep. You will use GardenCAD software as your CAD tool to first copy a design prepared by one of our students for that site/space. When you have done that, we ask you to create a design of your own for the very same space. We will follow that by asking you to complete several 'stretch' excercises.
We assume that before starting this project, that you have downloaded and installed a copy of GardenCAD in your computer.
How to copy the drawing
The figure below shows a 3-D model of the house and the design space available to you (later we will teach you how to build 3-D models such as this). The space is located at the rear of a proposed two story courtyard home. Note that the computer model shown below (which has been created using 3-D modelling software called Google SketchUp), shows accurate shadows at the nominated location (latitude), date and time of day. In this example, the month is October, the time is 1.30 pm and north is to the right of the picture.
Here is a link to a movie which shows you how to use GardenCAD to begin the copying process.
Here is a link to a YouTube version of the same movie.
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Your task is to produce a landscape plan for the rear of the house on the left. The space is 10 meters wide by 13 meters deep.
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The figure below shows one student's design for the space. Your first task is to use GardenCAD and copy this design as far as you are able. Here is a link to a PDF file that you can print out for copy purposes. It shows the required dimensions for you to copy.
Note that this drawing was made at an early stage of this students CAD learning, and as he had not taken the online course on learning to use GardenCAD (at http://www.landscapetutor.net), he was not able to be precise in placing entities (lines, arcs, text etc.). For example, if you look at the vertical white line in the figure below where we have zoomed in on the deck area, you can see that it is not 'registered' properly with the hatching used to indicate brick paving. CAD software has the ability to snap to elements in the drawing to precisely lock entities to others in the drawing, but our budding CAD designer had not learned to do that yet. We hope that you are not in a similar situation and have studied the online course on using GardenCAD.
Don't forget to include a plant schedule in your design similar to that shown in the figure below. If you have taken our introduction to botany course, you will be confident about naming plants correctly. We want the schedule to include a code (or visual symbol), the correct generic and species names, the common name and quantity in the design of that particular species.
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| Typical planting schedule. |
Showing a plant schedule - an alternative method
The figure below shows another design for the space and an alternative method of showing a planting schedule; in this case, the designer has directly indicated the name of every species used in the design using what are known as leader lines. There are no hard and fast rules to follow when indicating plant names - the method used will often depend on the complexity of the design. If you use this method, you still need a planting schedule with proper botanical names, common names and quantity used.
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| Design by MD. |
The importance of orienting your sheet for maximum display
It is important not to become 'blinkered' about the orientation of your design on the CAD 'page'. The figure below shows the same design you are copying, but rotated through 90 degrees. It is sometimes easier to work this way as the aspect ratio of your computer screen matches the design space.
Most users will wait till they get the geometry copied and then use the ROTATE command to spin the design (model) through 180 degrees.
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| Here we have rotated the model though 90 degrees. |
Since the screen has a landscape orientation and most plans are produced in landscape view, it makes sense to experiment with this type of orientation simply by spinning (rotating) the design.
When you have finished the second design, save it (making sure that you give the file a meaningful name when you - Project 4.3 Copied Design) and upload the CAD files to your Google Docs space.
Your design for the space
Now it is time to use GardenCAD to produce a design of your own for the same space. The figure below shows an example of another student's effort to create a design for the space.
Since you know how to construct hand drawn 3-D sketches of design spaces, you may find it easier to use pencil and paper to make a rough 3-D sketch of your design ideas before starting out on a CAD version of your own design.
Note that correct spelling in landscape CAD drawings (and hand drawn ones) is of paramount importance. The spelling of the term deciduous is incorrect here.
Some thoughts about your design philospophy
We ask that you use the MTEXT command to write a paragraph or two about the design philosophy you have adopted (shown as the white block of text above).
When you have finished the second design, save it (making sure that you give the file a meaningful name when you - Project 4.3 My Design) and upload the CAD files to your Google Docs space.
Drawing 3: - Prepare a design for the adjoining property
Practice makes perfect. If time permits, produce a design for the adjoining (much smaller) single story property adjacent to the first. The space available differs somewhat from the previous example and measures 11000 mm wide by 10000 mm deep.
Include a section view
When you have finished your design for the space, draw at least one section line through your design similar to the line labelled A-A in the figure below. Sections are created by drawing from it by drawing lines (up or down in this case) as shown in the second figure below.
This figure shows that our choice for the location of the section line could have been better.Can you see that your section line should be chosen to show the most important features of your design and not inserted at a random location.
The section line
The section itself
When you have finished the design, save it (making sure that you give the file a meaningful name when you save it e.g. Project 4.3 Section View) and upload the CAD files to your Google Docs space.
Drawing 4: a further extension exercise - irrigation design
Water is a scarce commodity. In most areas of the world, the price of water is steadily increasing. It make sense to create designs which take every opportunity to minimize water use or to use water captured on-site. There are a number of aspects of landscape design where water requirements needs to be considered.
Lawn irrigation
It is likely that the owner of this property will want a sub surface irrigation system installed under a newly planted 'instant' lawn. We would like you to create a series of drawings which will give the owner some indication as to how the system will be installed. this will be important for later maintenance.
Some research
Your first step should be to acquaint yourself with the guidelines for sub-surface irrigation produced by the manufacturer. The link below takes you to to a paper on the subject by one of the main equipment suppliers in this field. Please download and read it.
Click here for the Netafilm manual. It is a PDF file so try and read it online using Acrobat Reader. Remember, we are trying to teach you to use digital delivery whereve possible.
The manual contains a (rather complex) diagram showing how a lawn irrigation system might be installed.
Your task is to use GardenCAD to produce a CAD version of the drawing above. The drawing will become a standard block and used in any job that calls for subsurface irrigation under lawned areas. It will be saved in GardenCAD's block folder and used (stamped in) whenever a design calls for lawn irrigation.
Sub surface irrigation in a design
The figure below shows a schematic drawing of how such a system might be installed in our first site - the one behind the two story house. Note that the note calls for it to be read in conjunction with the generic diagram for the installation of irrigation above.
You might also like to develop a block drawing showing how the sub surface soils are prepared prior to the installation of such a system. This could be as simple as a MTEXT block of text.
When you have finished the design, save it (making sure that you give the file a meaningful name when you - Project 4.3 Irrigation design) and upload the CAD files to your Google Docs space.
A further extension - title block and logo
As an extension exercise to this project, we suggest that if you have not done some already, now is the time to design a logo & title block for your landscape consultancy.
One way to proceed would be to create a new drawing, set up a rectangle an appropriate size (say 50 mm by 50 mm) and design your logo in that space. Remember, at a later stage you will create another drawing (perhaps called title) [perhaps 100 x 55 mm] and populate the space with your logo, name, title, telephone (fixed) mobile, email address and the postal address of your consultancy.
To help spark ideas, we have included below some logos from a number of garden designers.
One of our students (KS) has produced a very fine logo using GardenCAD. The ability of GardenCAD to work with various layers (and to control the stacking order of those layers) was utilized when building the logo. When printed to a PDF file from GardenCAD using CutePDF writer, the resolution was outstanding. The logo works well on both black (inside GardenCAD) and white background (printed output). Make sure that you do the same and test your logo in both environments.
The logo is drawn once and used again and again on each and every design created by that KS; a great time saver.
Title block
Start another new drawing, draw the title block itself and using the Draw>Block insert from file option, insert the logo inside the title block.
Dimensions of a title block
We do not want to prescribe the organization of your title block and constrain how you organize things, but some students have asked for guidance. Here is a drawing of a title block and logo suitable for an A2 sheet, a sheet size commonly used by garden designers. The dimensions are in mm.
Here is someinformation on how we made a logo
The first step is to scan your hand drawn logo using ascanner or camera. Just make sure that you know where in your computer filing system you stored the image. It needs to be in .jpg file format. The image below shows an example of a hand drawn logo, scanned to a jpg file.
Now start GardenCAD, create a new layer, use Draw>Insert and place the scanned image into the drawing editor. Trace over the top of the logo using simple primitive elements such as lines, arcs etc. try and resist the temptation to use more complex elements such as polylines and splines.
You will delete the scanned image when you are finished, leaving a vector version of your logo. The figure below shows the nearly complete CAD logo.
If you have enough confidence in your GardenCAD skills, you can of course create a logo directly in CAD, but we recommend the approach above.
Submission
When you have finished the design, save it (making sure that you give the file a meaningful name when you - Project 4.3 Logo and Title block) and upload the CAD files to your Google Docs space.
Hand drawn perspective
Even though you have done a lot of work to make the 2-D plan, many clients have difficulty reading a 2-D plan. You might revisit some of the material on hand drawing on perspectives and in the landscape graphics text book by Read that we have recommended and prepare a hand drawn perspective sketch of your design for the first space. A typical sketch is shown below.
When you have finished the drawing, scan it (making sure that you give the file a meaningful name when you - Project 4.3 Hand sketch) and upload the CAD files to your Google Docs space.
Appendix
We will add more to this module at a later time. These will be included as fly out menu items from this option.
We will include:
- How to use the pages palette in GardenCAD,
- A discussion of dimensions,
- Scale bars,
- Adding photographs of actual design jobs,
- Photos of plant species being used in a landscape setting etc.
- Adding your own plant schedule,
- Creating the plant schedule in Microsoft Excel and pasting it onto the 2-D plan.
