Getting Started with the Planting Tools

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
  • What You’ll Need to Follow This Webinar
• Starting a New Project
• Adding Plants to Your Project
  • Adding Plants from the Master Database
  • Adding Plants from Another Project
  • Editing a Plant’s Data and Selecting a Symbol
  • Adding Plants from a Template
  • Editing a Shrub Area or Groundcover’s Data and Selecting a Symbol
• Setting Your Office's Planting Preferences
  • Plant Sizes Preferences
    • Available Plant Sizes
  • Planting Preferences
    • Plant Code Style
    • Plant Label Style
    • Schedule Defaults
• Placing Plants
  • Plant Shotgun
  • Match Plant
  • Copy Along Line, Polyline, and Arc
  • Match Properties
  • Exclude Shrubs
• Labeling & Editing Plants
  • Labeling Plants
  • Highlight Plant
  • Block Data
  • Labeling in Paper Space
  • Verify Labels
• Presentation Tools
  • Color Render
  • SketchUp Connection Tool
  • Plant Shadows
  • Plant Outlines
  • Concept Plants
  • More Plant Schedule Features

0:00 – 5:30: Intro/TOC

What You’ll Need to Follow This Webinar (2:40)

• AutoCAD or F/X CAD 2013 – Current Version
  • Check latest Land F/X compatibility if you’re watching this in the future!
  • Not LT or Mac version.
• Basic AutoCAD skill set
• Land F/X License
• Server and workstation installed.
• SketchUp Pro (Yes, we do mean PRO.)
• Basic SketchUp skill set

5:31 – 7:07: Starting a New Project

The first thing you’ll need to do when using our software is to start a new project.

 

How to start a new project (6:00)

 

Giving the project a name and number (6:30)

7:08 – 19:34: Adding Plants to Your Project

Adding Plants from the Master Database (7:08)

 

Opening the Plant Manager (7:08)

 

Docking and undocking the Plant Manager (7:30)

Docking the Plant Manager will keep it open as you place plants, allowing you to have your plant palette visible while still working in your drawing.

 

The four plant categories: Trees, Shrubs, Shrub Areas, and Groundcovers (8:00)

 

Adding a new plant to your project (example: adding a tree) (8:45)

 

The master plant database (8:50)

Our plant database is wiki-based, meaning it’s constantly updated with new plants.

 

How to add a plant to the master database (9:10)

 

Searching for a plant in the database (9:40)

 

Selecting the genus, species, and variety of plant you want to add, and clicking Done to add the plant (10:00)

 

Filtering the plants by data (10:20)

 

Adding Plants from Another Project (10:45)

How to import one or more plants from another project (10:45)

 

Editing a Plant’s Data and Selecting a Symbol (12:00)

Editing or adding data (such as cost, size, symbol width, etc.) to a plant (12:00)

 

Selecting a symbol for a plant (13:30)

 

Selecting a color symbol for a plant (14:05)

 

Selecting a 3D SketchUp symbol for a plant (14:30)

 

Adding Plants from a Template (15:40)

 

Editing a Shrub Area or Groundcover’s Data and Selecting a Symbol (16:35)

Assigning a Hatch to a Shrub Area or Groundcover (16:35)

Note: It’s not possible to assign a SketchUp symbol to a Shrub Area or groundcover while working in AutoCAD.

 

Assigning plant spacing, sizes, and container types to Shrub Areas and groundcovers, including flats (18:40)

19:35 – 28:56: Setting Your Office’s Plant Preferences

Accessing the Planting and Plant Sizes Preferences (19:40)

 

Plant Sizes Preferences (20:00)

 

Available plant sizes (20:00)

You have options to set up to six different plant size descriptions for each plant type. These descriptions can depend on anything from your preferences to the standards of your region.

 

Adding, editing, and deleting plant sizes (20:50)

 

Assigning a default cost to a plant size (21:00)

 

 

Planting Preferences (21:45)

 

Plant Code Style (21:55)

You can select a six- or two-letter plant code style from the Plant Preferences. If you want, you can also edit the plant code and the common and botanical names on a plant-by-plant basis.

 

Plant Label Style (23:21)

 

Our default plant label styles (23:30)

You can edit our plant label styles, as well as add your own.

 

Selecting a label extension line style (23:50)

 

How to open and edit the plant label styles (24:00)

 

Labeling in Paper Space (24:10)

 

Schedule Defaults (24:30)

 

Question: How was the Commercial Shrub Template created? (25:45)

Answer: First, open an existing project with the plants and settings you want (or create a project and add the plants and settings you want). Then click Save as Template. See our Setting Up Templates and Preference for Repeat Clients webinar for more information.

 

Question: How do you set the number of plants in a flat? (26:40)

Answer: Select Flat from the Container/rootball size menu in the Plant Info dialog box. You’ll then see a Flat Count menu. From there, you can select the number of plants per flat.

 

Question: How do you add plant factors to a plant’s data? (27:50)

Answer: Click the Plant Data button in the Plant Info dialog box to open the expanded dialog box. There, you’ll see a number of items you can customize.

28:57 – 42:03: Placing Plants

Place a plant by highlighting it in the Plant Manager and clicking Place (29:00)

 

Place a plant by double-clicking it in the Plant Manager (29:15)

 

Options for placing a Shrub Area or groundcover: select an existing closed polyline area, type D to draw the plant area on the fly, or type M to exclude multiple interior areas from the planting hatch. (29:20)

 

Placing a planting area on the fly using the D (Draw) option (29:40)

 

Setting your drawing scale (30:10)

 

Excluding interior objects from a planting hatch using the M (Multiple) option (32:00)

 

Using the Reverse command to fix a Shrub Area linetype (33:19)

 

Placing shrubs and trees (33:45)

 

Plant Shotgun Tool (34:30)

Plant Shotgun combines several keyboard commands, including toggling between numbers and patterns of plants, toggling to the previous or next plant in the list, “painting” several plants into your drawing at once, snapping the crosshairs to a selected angle, setting a plant spacing, rotating plants, copying plants, and labeling plants.

 

Match Plant (37:30)

With Match Plant, you can quickly select a plant and place copies without having to open the Plant Manager.

 

Copy Along Line, Polyline, and Arc (37:40)

 

Match Properties (39:30)

The Match Properties tool allows you to copy all the properties of one plant and apply them to one or more existing plants in your drawing.

 

Exclude Shrubs (40:15)

The Exclude Shrubs tool excludes individual shrubs from a groundcover hatch that surrounds them.

 

Array Plants (41:18)

You can place a triangular or rectangular array of plants, as well as use Plant Mirror to place a mirror image of an existing group of plants.

42:04 – 51:34: Labeling & Editing Plants

Labeling Plants (42:20)

Labeling a single plant (42:20)

 

The Manual Extension option – allows you to extend your plant label leaders as long as you want them (42:35)

 

Labeling by group (42:50)

 

Labeling by connecting line or arc (43:07)

 

Highlight Plant (43:37)

Highlight Plant helps you locate all plants of a selected variety by highlighting them in yellow throughout your drawing.

 

Block Data (43:50)

Our Block Data tool allows you to view and edit all data attached to a plant.

Plant blocks in our software are “smart,” meaning they have data attached to them. So a tree block “knows” what type of tree it represents.

 

Labeling in Paper Space (45:00)

Our Scaling tool ensures that labels are in the correct scale whether you label in Model Space or Paper Space.

 

Verify Labels (46:10)

Our Verify Labels tool is essentially a spell check for your plants and labels. It will circle unlabeled plants in cyan and plants labeled more than once in yellow. 

 

Note: If you haven’t labeled any trees or shrubs in your drawing, Verify Labels won’t track unlabeled trees or shrubs. As soon as you’ve labeled one tree or shrub, the tool will start tracking unlabeled trees and shrubs.

 

Using the Label by Group tool to correct labeling issues (47:08)

 

Running a Plant Schedule to verify that your edits are correct (47:40)

 

Question: Is there a way to specify the length of arcs in a planting area boundary? (48:50)

Answer: The arc lengths are set in each default Shrub Area linetype. The lengths will changes based on the scale you set for your drawing. Stay tuned; we’re developing additional Shrub Area boundary linetypes.

 

Regenerating a Plant Schedule to reflect changes in the plan (50:15)

51:35 – end: Presentation Tools

Color Render (51:50)

The Color Render tool allows you to select color symbols for each of your plants. When enabled, this tool renders your entire plan.

 

Our color plant symbols are transparent, allowing you to see linework and plants below.

 

Selecting a new color symbol for a plant variety (52:44)

 

Regenerating the Plant Schedule to show color symbols (53:20)

 

Example of a plot preview of a colorized planting plan (53:40)

 

Turning Color Render off and regenerating the schedule again to go back to editing the plan (54:00)

 

SketchUp Connection Tool (54:20)

Exporting a plan to a 3D SketchUp model (54:54)

SketchUp tree symbols will stay consistent with the tree sizes you’ve set in CAD.

 

You can also assign your own custom SketchUp symbols and make changes to your plan in SketchUp. See our Assign a Custom SketchUp Component Power Tip.

 

Exporting a plan back into AutoCAD from SketchUp (56:10)

If you’ve made edits to your plan in SketchUp, those changes will be reflected when you bring your plan back into CAD.

 

Plant Shadows (56:55)

You can set a custom rotation for your plant shadows.

 

Turning plant shadows off (57:10)

 

Plant Outlines (57:14)

You can add outlines to trees, shrubs, or both. The outline creates a gray border around the outside of the symbol, helping it stand out from the background.

 

Concept Plants (59:00)

Concept Plants allow you to add general groups of plants to your project (such as boulevard trees) to create an initial conceptual plan and get cost estimates early in the job.

 

More Plant Schedule Features (59:50)

Exporting a Plant Schedule to a spreadsheet and including cost estimates (59:50)

 

Question: Is it possible to add columns to the Plant Schedule? (1:00:20)

Answer: Yes. You’ll do this when your schedule is excessively long. We recommend placing your schedule and using our New Viewport tool to place additional columns as needed.

 

Placing a Plant Schedule in table format (1:00:50)