Ask Us Anything: Planting

Note: The following catalog of content covered in this webinar is time stamped to allow you to follow along or skip to sections of the video that are relevant to your questions. You can also search for content on this page using the FIND command in your browser (CTRL + F in Windows, Command + F in Mac OS.)

• Intro/TOC
• Recent Changes
  • Land F/X Trainer
  • Hatch Library
  • Revit Type Parameters
• Immediate Roadmap
  • Big Ideas Being Worked On
• Questions
• Questions & Answers from This Presentation

0:00 – 3:35: Intro/TOC

3:36 – 8:11: Recent Changes

Land F/X Trainer (3:36)

Hatch Library (4:45)

Revit Type Parameters (6:44)

8:12 – 28:42: Immediate Roadmap

Big Ideas Being Worked On (8:12)

• Plant Portfolio (8:25)
• Bloom Schedule (name changed to Plant Color Board) (12:14)
• New block names (13:58)
• Color Render changes (15:13)
• Expanded functionality in Revit and SketchUp plugins (16:06)
• Plant Portfolio (21:04)
• Installing the SketchUp plugin and new SketchUp features (24:31):
  • New toolbar
  • Selecting a face and choosing plural plants

28:43 – end: Questions

Scroll to the bottom of this window for the full list of questions and answers in this presentation.

Groundcover flats (28:43)

Mimic tool (31:44)

Work Areas and sending a schedule to a spreadsheet application such as Excel (35:18)

Adding a plant back to the plant count after missing one while labeling (48:01)

How to align plant labels (50:53)

You can also pick up some tips for aligning your labels in our Advanced Labeling Power Tip.

How to handle project phasing with planting (54:41)

See our How to Cross Reference Plans and Show a Phased Planting Plan Power Tips for more information.

Questions & Answers from This Presentation

Question: During my plant counts, if I miss one plant, is there a way to add that plant to the count?

Answer: (live answered at 48:01) You can always go back and add more plant labels or use the Verify Labels tool to update the counts.

Question: Do you keep a database of what plants users are using in their projects somehow through the cloud or otherwise?

Answer: Yes indeed.  We update a popularity count for plants, incrementing each time that plant is chosen by a user. We plan on rolling some additional tools, to quickly access the most popular plants, as well as offering common companion plants. In the meantime, we use the popularity index to help our horticulturist know which plants to focus on.

Question: This is when I verify my plants and I have missed a plant in a continuous line.

Answer: You can use the Label by Group tool again and click on the label you want to update. In the Command line, you can choose to draw a new window to include the plant you missed. More information

Question: In our region, we often deal with saline soils. What would be your suggestion for adding this information for individual plants?

Answer: There are two ways you can do this. First, we have a tag in the plant data field called "salty" under the category soil tolerances. Add this tag and select to display the soil tolerances field in your schedule.

The section option is to create a custom data field for your specific need via the Portal. This will be custom to you. More information

Question: Is there a way to show the plant elevation symbols in color in the preview box? I am currently having to insert them one at a time to see them in color.

Answer: This is in Revit?

This year we plan on adding a custom Color selection capability, so in addition to Plan and Elevation view, we will be adding the Color selection.

Question: Is there a way to export your schedule into Excel that includes each Work Area as subsections? We know you can export the entire palette, but how do we include the Work Areas as categories within the Excel schedule?

Answer: (live answered at 35:18) That is the All option. So when prompted to select a Work Area or right-click for Entire Drawing, just enter A for All Work Areas.

Question: In the Plant Manager, is there a way to save the color render and symbol to a specific plant so every time I design with that specific plant it will always have that color and symbol?

Answer: Absolutely. Simply save that project as a Template, and then Import plants from that template. More information

Question: After you have placed a plant with Land F/X, how can you change that plant and delete the old plant from the Plant Manager?

Answer: When you edit a plant, there is a Change Plant button, allowing you to pick a different plant to swap out the existing one, including all instances in the drawing.

Question: Are there any known issues using Land F/X with Autodesk Docs?

Answer: I recall having an issue with the saving of the Land F/X data backup file, the LFX that is saved alongside the DWG. With Autodesk Docs, I believe this was generating an error, as only DWG files could be stored there. This may have changed, however.

Question: I have a question regarding issues with the Plant Schedule text. When I need to change font/ text size, I am resizing through F/X Admin > General. I am having an issue of schedule text showing up extremely light / not having a standard text option (Romans) available through "add new.".

I am also wondering if there is a way to lock schedule text per LFX file for when working on multiple projects in a day. When regening the schedule, the settings set up in the latest F/X Admin > General populate, even if changed in a different file.

Answer: When you make changes in F/X Admin > General, you are making changes to the current Preference Set, which can be seen in the bottom left of the Preferences window. Those changes will then be reflected in all projects using that Preference Set, so it is not a per-file change. More information

If the font you choose for your Schedule Text does not have a standard option, we would suggest choosing a different font.

Question: We use a lot of landscape plugs. The individual plugs, often planted 12" on center, can easily be counted using the Concept Plant Manager (which is great). We would love a way for Land F/X to then calculate how many trays to then order for a planting plan. The trays come in plug groups of 32 or 50 or 72, and you have to buy a whole tray. The cost of the tray would then go into the schedule.

Answer: (live answered at 28:43) You can specify groundcovers in flats. More information

Question: We tried that just yesterday and it would only categorize the plants based on their Group (within their plant edit) and not the Work Areas.

Answer: With the All Work Areas option, each Work Area is a separate quantity column.

Question: Can you make more palm symbols 2D?

Answer: We definitely have this on the list to get done! If you have examples of what style of trees you are looking for, let us know :)

Question: Is there a way to manually set plant height/widths rather than using the set dimension choices in the plant data? (Ex. 18-36", 3-6ft.)

Answer: One option would be to create a custom field via the Portal with the specific height ranges you would like. More information

Question: I want to talk to you about your plant popularity count and a conversation I had with a nursery owner that spoke at NJASLA the last weekend. Do you have a direct email or number to which I can reach out later?

Answer: That is actually a project that Molly is working on. Simply email support@landfx.com and we will route your inquiry to Molly.

Question: We'd like a way to calculate how many flats of the groundcover will be needed for order and have that automatically go on the schedule. Right now it calcs the individual plugs. We generally calc 16 plants per flat. This is essential for sending our Schedule to the nursery for ordering. Currently i have to calc myself and enter the actual flat qty. in the Remarks column.

Answer: (live answered at 28:43) When you choose "Flat" for a groundcover size, an additional drop-down will appear, allowing you to specify the flat count.

Question: Could you add a new column to the Plant Schedule like Excel and have sum, like plant coverage?

Answer: You can send a schedule directly to Excel to perform any such additional calculations. We do have a wishlist request for a Biodiversity column. It could be that Coverage could be added with that. You are encouraged to send in an example of what you would like.

Question: Sometimes we need to make planting changes during an addendum or change order, and this could be months or years after our CAD work was completed, and there are usually a few Land F/X updates in between. Is there a way to update the plant schedule in the format that was used at the time? I've had this happen where the plant schedule updated to the newest formatting, and the entire table changed. All plan changes need to be justified in these instances, so we don't want formatting, text, etc. to change. It would be great if there was a checkbox we could click that said, "Maintain previous formatting" when updating a plant schedule.

Answer: We did completely rewrite the Plant Schedule function two years ago. We do not plan on changing it again for quite a long time, quite possibly decades. This is only the second time we have made such a dramatic change with the Plant Schedule. The good news is that the new schedule has far more customization options available, and is able to fit in the same space as any existing schedule. Some schedules, showing symbols, smushed onto the plan sheet, may require some reworking, and that is just an unfortunate side effect of this very rare but necessary upgrade.

Question: Let's say we have 20 plants of one species in our layout, and want to change only 5 of them to be another species. Is there a quick way to do this? I have only been able to switch all of one species on the layout to another.

Answer: (live answered at 31:44) That is where our Mimic tool comes into play! More information

Question: In the Plant Portfolio, will there be a way to change the font styles and images that autogenerate when the document is made?

Answer: Yes, the fonts are tied to your Preference Set Text Styles, and the photo is tied to the plant in the Plant Manager. Once you adjust to your liking, run the Portfolio tool and it will load what is set.

Question: If you're adding seed mix, will it be able to calculate how many pounds are needed? (I haven't played around with that to know if you can already do tha.t)

Answer: That is the plan. Any examples you can send will only help!

Question: When establishing your plant Work Areas, does the boundary just need to go through the center of a plant symbol or capture the entire symbol in order to include it in the qty take off?

Answer: In order for a plant symbol to be counted within the Work Area, its insertion point (usually the center) needs to be inside that boundary. For plant hatches, the majority of the vertices need to be within the boundary.

Question: How do I find/install the SketchUp plugin?

Answer: This is only available to those with a valid Land F/X License. You can find it on our website as Amanda shows in the webinar.

Question: Do you recommend we re-create our plant database to include the new features? Or just edit the plants we currently have?

Answer: From the Edit Plant dialog, you can click the "Data >" button to see its extended plant data. If the data appears, and appears correct, that plant is correctly linked to the master database. If no data appears, it is probably a custom plant that is not in our master database, and should be replaced.

Question: Do y'all have any plans to integrate any further than "export" to VIP3D?

Answer: Never heard of VIP3D. Any info and examples you can send us would help.

Question: VIP3D is one of the Structure Studios programs.

Answer: We would very much like to pursue integrations with Structure Studios. They have amazing products. We have been unsuccessful in connecting with anyone there. If you have any contacts to share or can introduce us, that would be swell.

Question: Amanda mentioned seed mixes and suppliers. If you do not have this one already, would be a great one to add: Ernst Seeds

Answer: Ernst is top of our list for suppliers to add! Look forward to seeing their mixes listed once that tool is launched.

Question: I usually use BCOUNT to count the trees and shrubs in a specific area. Is there a faster way to count plant material?

Answer: Definitely faster with placing Work Areas around your different areas you want to keep split out. You can then simply click Highlight Plant and click on one, and it will only count that plant within that area. You could then also just run a schedule for a given Work Area to get all qty for all plants in the area.

Question: It would be nice to have a "Regen" button that automatically updates the planting labels quantities throughout the whole project all at once per the windows that was set when creating the label

Answer: Our Verify Labels tool was created for this purpose. You do need to have the file with the labels in it open while running. More information

Question: Follow-up: Did you want examples of seed mixes or examples of the calculations we use to find pounds needed? Or both :) ?

Answer: Examples of how you would like it to appear in labels and schedules. We don't need the equations.

Question: Prairie Moon, American Meadows, and PT Lawn are wonderful resources for seed mixes as well!

Answer: Noted, thank you! These are on the list!

Question: Another seed supplier if not already in your database: Jonathan Green

Answer: Noted, thank you!

Question: Roundstone Seed – another great supplier with great information.

Answer: Noted, thanks!

Question: Plant Portfolio is super awesome! I think often when I create things like that I will create a summary page showing all of the trees (or like 8-12 of them) on one letter or tabloid, all the shrubs on another, etc,, to give the client a quick overview of what the palette looks like. I can send an example of what this looks like if you let us know what email would be useful

Answer: (live answered at 45:50) You can create a schedule with Photos, and only the Botanical name, making a very concise summary with 1.5" photos.

Question: Johnson Seed is the standard in Oklahoma, They have seed mixes for native plants also.

Answer: Thank you for the input! Great to know.

Question: Is there a way to keep tree/shrub symbols at the same orientation when working on individual single-family lots with their own UCS? The only way I've found is to have my plant lists off to the side at various orientations but it makes the file look messy for others jumping into it. before I started using Land F/X, we would use "Match Orientation" in the Block Editor, which would work for this.

Answer: Trees and shrubs should always match the current UCS. It would be recommended to use Work Areas, and associate a UCS with each Work Area.

Question: They have color applied as soon as I insert them into the drawing. And I'm fine with that, but I'd like to see what they look like before inserting them. Just asking if the preview can be the same as the block once inserted.

Answer: Currently our previews are SLD files, which do not display color fills correctly. We are in the process of converting to PNGs for thumbnails. When this happens, we will either have the previews be in color, or have the option to toggle between the two.

Question: Sketchup plugin: If we populate a face with plants through fill, can we go in and adjust a single plant in it as needed?

Answer: After you apply the fill as you want it, the plants are just single plants and you can adjust individual items as needed

Question: I know you can filter plants by traits like water use, sun exposure, etc., when adding a new plant to the project, but is there a way to use those filters on the plants already within my project plants, say if I only want to see plants in my own plant palette that take shade?

Answer: I believe we do not currently have this feature, but I will make a note of the request. Thank you for your input!

Question: I think usually for seed mix we usually like to show "target number of seeds per square foot," "percent of species composition within mix," "estimated pure live seed pound per species" for each species, and then pounds of pure live seed for the overall seed mix.

Answer: Yes, I'd like to see how you would like this to appear in a schedule. I imagine the square footage also needs to display, so seeing how you would like this to appear in labels and schedule will help tremendously.

Question: When calculating a square foot and adding to the schedule or plant callout, is there a way to round up groundcover perennials to the nearest 5 sq.f.t?

Answer: No.

Question: Is there a way to change hatch sizes after they've already been placed in Land F/X through CAD? I've encountered plotting and realizing the hatch is extremely dense and needing to rescale the hatch. Thank you!!

Answer: If you need to change your plot scale, you can select to rescale objects along with it. More information

Question: We have a problem with our plant area hatches changing scale when we close and re-open a drawing. The scale is typically reduced when this happens. It happens with both Shrub Areas and groundcover areas.

Answer: Nothing in Land F/X would rescale a hatch upon opening the file. When that happens, save the file as a copy, and send us the before and after versions.

Question: I don't think Granite Seed has been mentioned yet. They're big in at least for the western part of the country. And another one is Western Native Seed.

Answer: Noted, thanks!

Question: For the plant callout, if the ( ) are removed, the quantity is too close to the text. Can this be spaced out?

Answer: You can have two spaces and a hyphen " – " between the quantity and code.

Question: Can you assign an elevation symbol to a plant? We always insert the building elevations from the architect and place dumb blocks to accent the building.

Answer: We have been restructuring our content to allow for more flexibility for requests like this. I will note it to discuss!

Question: How do you eliminate unnecessary fields that are automatically generated with the Plant Schedule command? I don't want these "Field 1" "Field 2" columns showing without data.

Answer: As long as all plants in the schedule do not have anything in that field, it will not appear. If you never use the field, you can completely remove it in Preferences.

Question: Please add to the wishlist an option to round to the nearest 5 sq.ft.. Thank you.

Answer: We have received a few requests for rounding quantities, usually to the nearest 10. This is not something we entertain, as it is antithetical to the entire purpose of the software. Quantities can easily be rounded in Excel if necessary for bidding purposes. But the quantities generated by Land F/X match exactly what is in the drawing.

Question: Great! Just found the flat option. That is wonderful. Do you know how it calculates the flats? Does it round up or down?

Answer: It has to round up.

Question: I have been requesting the plant color board for a while, THANK YOU! This will save us tons of time.

Answer: So exciting to hear that we are providing valuable functionality for you! Cheers.

Question: Can we export the Plant Schedule to a Google Docs spreadsheet not Excel?

Answer: You have to not have Excel installed.

Question: One of the arrows under F/X Site has the arrow head we like, but the text is shown in a box. how can we remove the box and just text only?

Answer: We are reworking that tool this year to have separate options of Arrow, Mask, and Frame.

Question: Thank you so much! If you add more plants, will this update?

Answer: Of course!

Question: I have had to generate schedules in the past where the client wanted to see the size of a plant only (height and width), but not the pot size. Would it be possible to separate this information in the future so I can more easily customize my schedules?

Answer: As long as you put these fields in separate user fields, you should be able to tell the schedule what to show. At worst, you may need to place schedules in Model Space through a viewort and clip out what you don't need.

Question: Are you doing anything specific to get your plant labels so neatly placed and stacked and they appear to be spaced the same? Or is this just good drafting/snapping?

Answer: (live answered at 50:53)

Question: Is there a way to have the Photo Callouts just happen for all plants rather than selecting them one by one? Is there a way to then import those photos to come in at a specific size?

Answer: You can select Photo for the schedule.

We have a pending wishlist for a Photo Manager to easily place photos from all items onto a single photo sheet.

Question: It would be nice to see a way to incorporate phasing with plantings. For example, say we want to only plant trees at a certain time and then shrubs and perennials at a later time. But instead of turning the shrub layer off so they are completely gone, if there was a way to fade them back so they are still visible but not as visible as the trees, that would be helpful when presenting to clients.

Answer: (live answered at 54:41) The best way to do this in CAD is through an Xref level. It would also be best practices to have each phase be its own DWG.

Question: Can you tell me quickly what is the plant label style you are using from the Preferences panel on this drawing?; (I like it.)

Answer: Plant-Mlabel08

Question: My manager wanted me to pass on a couple of her wishlist items, mostly for Concept Plant Manager since we mostly do restoration design and use Concept Plant Manager. She was wondering if it would be possible to change all of the on center spacing in Concept Plant Manager to feet? (Ideally this would follow the industry standard of feet for anything larger than 24" o.c.). Also, it would be nice to separate the spacing and percentage into separate columns so you could turn off one if needed. Finally, It would be nice if you could specify a certain amount of clear space under trees in Concept Plant Manager. So that maybe your trees are 10 ft o.c. but shrubs can partially be planted under them. I know that last one is sort of complex, we have been doing a workaround of making our trees add up to 100% and then the shrubs slightly less than 100.

Answer: (live answered at 59:07)

Question: Simple palm symbols with different center trunk symbols. We like to have trees/ palms in our shrub plans for reference and the busy symbols make if less clear for graphics.

Answer: If you could send in an example of these symbols, that would help!

Question: I have a question about using Concept Plant shrub areas in the Standard plant schedules. I like having the grid lines showing, but I don't like how they cross over the hatches. Are there any other workarounds other than exploding the schedules and deleting certain lines?

Answer: (live answered at 59:14) The only viable engineered solution would be rather involved logic to turn off just those gridlines. We just haven't prioritized that. In the meantime, it will require turning off the gridlines, or having the Concept Schedule separate, but still without gridlines.