An overview of the professional CAD software used by the landscape industry
For the uninitiated, CAD or Computer Aided Design is now a big part of a landscape designer’s repertoire.
Not every designer uses them, in fact, some of the most famous designers such as Piet Oudolf and Tom Stuart-Smith still do hand-drawn plans.
But CAD drawings are now becoming more and more important, especially for the contractor who now wants accurate garden schematics.
There are a number of different CAD software providers on the market from AutoCAD to Revit and the ubiquitous SketchUp.
Each has its merits, but our own personal preference is Vectorworks.
Considered the industry standard landscape design tool it has a number of amazing features which makes it ideal to create every aspect of your perfect garden.
The design of a garden should never be just about the plan.
It should be a reflection of what the garden will look like as a completed three-dimensional design.
At Jon Norman Garden Design, we create all our designs with Vectorworks drawings.
One of the major advantages of this type of program is that the 2D plan can also be viewed as a 3D model.
The 3D model can then be manipulated within the program to create:
Our design process begins by adding your garden survey into a new Vectorworks file.
Depending on the survey technique used, ground elevations are shown as either contours or spot heights. These are added to each of our Vectorworks drawings to create a site model.
In addition to the slope details of the site, it is useful to add existing buildings, trees and other features to the plan.
This helps us visualise the entire local area around your garden. Your neighbour’s houses, trees in your vicinity or other items in your field of view.
To help us judge the local area, a terrain map is added to a new layer in Vectorworks (right of the image shown).
This can be provided by a surveyor or can be imported from Google maps or other topographical sources
Now the terrain map has been added it can be used to plot existing trees and neighbourhood buildings.
For these features, we use some of the 2D/3D hybrid tools available in Vectorworks drawings. These display an object as a 2D symbol in plan view, and a physical three-dimensional entity when viewed in 3D.
Above: Plan view of buildings or massing models (shown in grey) and existing tree symbols (circles).
Below: In the same image shown in 3D, the massing model symbols become physical buildings, and the existing tree symbols become representations of 3D tree shapes.
Notice that we can now visualise the entire local landscape.
Shade and sun have more influence on the design of a garden than any other aspect.
Plants that have evolved to survive in shady growing conditions and will suffer or die if they are planted in a sunny position.
Decks placed in a shady area can become slippy and are more liable to rot. The hot sun could dry out small water features such as lily bowls.
These and other aspects are where an accurate sun and shade map is an essential feature of the garden plan.
Within Vectorworks there is a light source known as a Heliodon. This generates a virtual sun within the design. This is given the precise latitude and longitude values of your home and creates accurate shadows on the plan.
These can be adjusted to display the sun’s position at any time of day and at any date in the yearly calendar.
Thus we have an accurate way to determine the shadiest and sunniest areas on your site and everything in between.
One of the most important aspects of creating a garden is to ensure it blends effectively with your property.
We, therefore, take the time to create an accurate model of your house so that we can see how it will look once all the paving, planting and other structures are added to the site.
Also, an accurate house model means we can see what your garden will look like from inside your property.
This is important as the most common view you will have of your garden is when you look out of your kitchen or living room window.
Vectorworks drawings come with a set of architectural tools which enable us to add fences, hedges, walls, windows, doors, floors, ceilings and roofs.
1. We initially begin by creating the ground floor of the building.
2. We then add the second floor and the roof.
3. Finally, we add the house boundary using the wall, fence tools or hedging objects.
There is a distinct link between a house and a garden. The house is realistically the largest element in any garden and therefore should have the most influence on the design.
Failure to connect the house and garden often leads to a disjointed and unsatisfying garden space.
A professional garden designer will use a grid to structure the garden. The size of the grid is based on the most noticeable aspects of the house, perhaps the porch or a conservatory.
This is then laid over the garden plan and is used to help generate the final design.
Here are a few garden designs we have created that successfully use this grid-based system. They range from small courtyard gardens to larger country estates.
With a large garden, there are different zones of influence for the house.
Different-sized grids are used at periodic intervals to reflect this.
Construction drawings are cross-sections and isometric diagrams of garden elements whilst Cascade drawings detail the garden measurements, slope gradients and drainage features.
We have already covered these in this blog: Construction and Cascade Drawings
Vectorworks drawings can also contain detailed plant plans and plant data info sheets.
We have detailed how this works in this blog: Plant Plans
Depending on the size of the site and the work being done, it may be necessary to create a contour map showing changes in elevation (or levels) between the existing site and the proposed design.
Vectorworks has built-in tools to create these changes.
Drainage is of utmost importance to any garden design.
In the set of following examples – we use a very simple back garden design to show how the 2D/3D process works step by step.
The image to the right shows a site model, a simple house, and a fenced garden shown in both 2D plan and 3D view.
Initially, we create your garden in 2D. We start with a hand-drawn sketch as the fluidity of pencil on paper helps to visualise the design.
We then transfer this design into Vectorworks, initially as a series of coloured shapes. This allows us to see if the design is still viable from our original pencil sketch.
Now we are satisfied with the plan, we convert our base shapes into 2D/3D hybrid symbols and at this point, the garden begins to come alive.
In the image on the right, we see two views of the proposed garden. The paving has been created along with grass, stepping stones, a pergola and flower beds. The hole in the ground is where a pool will go. For the moment it appears empty but will fill with water once we show the garden in a higher quality render.
With this basic garden view, we can then complete the overall design by adding plants and trees as well as furniture such as tables and sofas.
Note: The plants and trees in this design are simply there as placeholders and will be refined to specific varieties in a later design phase.
At this point we can now create full 3D renders of your garden so you can get an idea of how it will look.
As you have seen, Vectorworks landscape is a very powerful design tool. This helps us create accurate 2D and 3D views of your garden, plant plans as well as construction and cascade drawings.
However to help you truly visualise a design, Vectorworks can create fly-through movies of your garden. A short (slightly low quality) demonstration video of a fly-through is shown below.
In addition to this, you can download an app for your mobile phone which will allow you to view a 3D model as an in-situ virtual reality experience.
