Common Land F/X Questions

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
• How to Find Answers
• Top 10 Common Questions
  • 1. I wish plant callouts were multileaders.
  • 2. Can I save and use plants local to my area with all settings instead of adding them from scratch each time?
  • 3. Can I make a color rendered elevation?
  • 4. Can I lock down my office standards?
  • 5. Can I edit the default layers?
  • 6. Can you add this hatch to the available site hatches?
  • 7. Can I use shortcuts with Land F/X commands?
  • 8. Do my drawings get stored on the cloud?
  • 9. How do I share my Land F/X drawing with another Land F/X user?
  • 10. Can I assign the same simple symbol to everything?
• Top 10 Under-Used Tools
  • 1. (Planting & Site) Highlight Tools
  • 2. (Site) Hardscape Tools
  • 3. (Site) Reference Note User Fields
  • 4. (Site) Spot Elevation
  • 5. (Site) Saving a Dimension Style
  • 6. (Admin) Work Areas
  • 7. (Site) Xhair Angle
  • 8. (Admin) UCS
  • 9. (Admin) REDEFINEBLOCK & Other Hidden Commands
  • 10. (Details) Saving and Placing Details
• Questions

0:00 – 2:43: Intro/TOC

2:44: – 4:10: How to Find Answers

Training resources on our website:

• Step-by-Step Trainer
• Documentation
• Webinar recordings
• Getting Started Guides
• Our Support page (where you can either search or navigate to a solution to a host of potential issues and error messages covered in our Knowledge Base)

4:11 – 32:04: Top 10 Common Questions

1. I wish plant callouts were multileaders. (4:26)

As of 2019, we've built multileaders into our plant labels! See our documentation on updated plant label styles with multileaders for more information.

 

2. Can I save and use plants local to my area with all settings instead of adding them from scratch each time? (6:15)

Yes. You can create project templates that include any list of plants you commonly use, including the settings you tend to use for these plants. You can then base future projects on the template of your choice. (7:13)

 

For more information, see our:

• Using Plant Templates webinar
• Templates documentation

 

3. Can I make a color rendered elevation? (9:14)

Yes you can.

 

Populating your elevation with graphics using our Elevation Graphics tool (9:50)

 

Turning on our Site Color tool (10:57)

 

Changing the colors in our blocks and adding color to the rest of your drawing (11:13)

 

Placing blocks from our Discipline Graphics library (example: section flags) (13:18)

 

For more information, see our Creating a Quick Elevation Drawing Power Tip. 

 

Turning the color off (14:25)

 

4. Can I lock down my office standards? (14:35)

Yes. You can lock down your Preference Sets, including fonts, callout styles, default schedules, plant sizes, and detail templates.

 

Overview of Preferences and Preference Sets (14:48)

 

Managing the Preference Set permissions in your office (16:00)

You can set a Preference Set to Read-Only, as well as assign it different permissions for each user in your office.

 

You can also set permissions for your Land F/X projects. (16:40)

 

For more information, see our:

• Preference Set Permissions documentation
• Project Permissions & Read-Only Projects documentation

 

5. Can I edit the default layers? (17:20)

Yes you can, but we don’t recommend it.

 

Overview of our default layers (17:25)

 

How to edit a layer (18:05)

We don’t recommend editing the layer names. Many of our commands rely on these specific default layer names to function correctly.

 

6. Can Land F/X add this hatch to the available site hatches? (19:45)

Overview of our default hatch patterns (20:00)

 

In many cases, we can add specific hatches upon request. However, you can also save your custom hatches into the Land F/X hatch library using our Save Hatch tool (20:30).

 

See our Save Hatch documentation for instructions. 

 

Deleting a hatch from the library using our DELETEHATCH command (21:00)

Note that if you delete one of our default hatches, it will repopulate itself automatically.

 

Editing a hatch (21:40)

 

7. Can I use shortcuts with Land F/X commands? (22:25)

Yes. You can create aliases for all AutoCAD and Land F/X commands.

 

New keyboard shortcuts added with F/X CAD 2018 (23:21)

See our F/X CAD 2018 New Keyboard Shortcuts page for details. 

 

Setting your own keyboard command aliases (23:37)

 

See our keyboard commands documentation section for lists of keyboard commands for each of our ribbons (Admin, Site, Planting, Irrigation, Details). 

 

8. Do my drawings get stored on the cloud? (24:40)

No. We do not store your actual physical DWG drawings.

 

Overview of Cloud vs. Local Data (25:10)

Land F/X consists of three components:

• Cloud content libraries (including plant, irrigation, and site manufacturer blocks)
• LandFX folder (blocks, details, Admin & CTB files, software files)
• Your database (Project list, project managers, associating data with your CAD blocks)

 

***All DWG files you use are stored by YOU. We do not manage your working drawings or any custom blocks you create.***

 

However, you CAN choose to store these items on your own shared cloud-based storage system using a service such as Dropbox.

 

For more information on Cloud Data, see our Cloud page.

 

9. How do I share my Land F/X drawing with another Land F/X user? (28:07)

If you’re on Cloud Data, your project data is shared with everyone in your office, including those off site.

 

Want to share your Land F/X data with another Land F/X user who has a different license from yours? You’ll need to send that information manually. (28:45)

 

How to send your Land F/X data to another user manually using our Backup/Restore features (29:30)

Remember: When you share your data manually in this way, it’s no longer dynamic. That means you shouldn’t add or change anything in the project while that other user is working on the drawing because your changes won’t show up for the other user.

 

Sharing your Preference Set with another user (30:40)

Your Preference Set also won’t be dynamic for the other user.

 

10. Can I assign the same simple symbol to everything? (30:55)

Yes you can, but we don’t recommend it. This practice is a holdover from a time when it was more difficult to use different symbols for different plants. We make it super easy to use different symbols for different plants, which makes your plan much easier to read.

32:05 – 53:19: Top 10 Under-Used Tools

1. (Planting & Site) Highlight Tools (32:30)

We also have this tool for irrigation.

 

Overview of the Highlight tools (33:10)

You can use the Highlight tools to locate all instances of a specific plant, site amenity, etc. throughout your drawing. They’re great for error checking, deleting errant plants, etc.

 

Using the Highlight tools to select similar objects, such as categories of plants. (34:42)

 

See our Highlight Plant documentation for more information. 

 

2. (Site) Hardscape Tools (35:55)

“Smart” hardscape hatches and Reference Notes (36:10)

Reference Notes provide the ability to assign data to blocks, hatches, linear objects on a specific layer, and other objects.

 

Overview of Reference Notes and the Reference Note Manager (37:00)

 

See our Reference Notes: Getting Started documentation for more information. 

 

3. (Site) Reference Note User Fields (32:50)

User fields give you the option to add even more information to your Reference Notes. Note that they’ll only be available if you have a division set.

 

Adding a field (such as Color) (38:38)

 

See our Reference Notes User Fields documentation for more information. 

 

4. (Site) Spot Elevation (38:57)

Spot Elevation callouts provide a quick way to add elevation markers throughout your drawing.

 

Overview of placing a Spot Elevation (39:20)

 

Available options once you’ve placed a Spot Elevation (40:00)

 

See our Spot Elevation documentation for more information. 

 

Bonus tip: Using the NCOPY and SUPERJOIN commands to copy a polyline from an Xref and connect it to other linework in the main drawing (40:40)

 

Placing a Slope Callout (41:55)

 

5. (Site) Saving a Dimension Style (42:11)

Our dimensioning tools allow you to use our default Dimension Style (DimStyle) or select your own custom style.

 

Modifying a DimStyle and saving it under your Preference Set (42:40)

 

See our DimStyle documentation for more information. 

 

6. (Admin) Work Areas (42:25)

Work Areas allow you to differentiate different areas in your drawing. You can use Work Areas to break up your schedules, set different scales, or just organize your drawing into different regions.

 

Overview of placing a Work Area (43:57)

 

Selecting a Work Area when placing a schedule: The schedule will only list items within that Work Area. (44:40)

 

Using Work Areas to differentiate scales within your drawing (44:50)

 

Adding a layer prefix to a Work Area (45:15)

With layer prefixes, you can get an entire Work Area on a specific layer, allowing you to easily perform actions on that layer such as freezing it.

 

For more information, see our:

• Work Areas documentation
• Using Work Areas webinar

 

7. (Site) Xhair Angle (45:37)

Xhair angle “snaps” your cursor crosshairs to the angle of your choice in your drawing, which can be handy when drawing polylines, placing plants, etc.

 

Overview of Xhair Angle (45:40)

 

See our Xhair Angle documentation for more information. 

 

8. (Admin) UCS (47:00)

You can set a User Coordinate System (UCS) to view your drawing at the angle of your choice.

 

Overview of setting a UCS (47:10)

You can also assign a UCS to a Work Area.

 

Restoring a UCS or selecting the World Coordinate System (WCS) (47:33)

 

Restoring a UCS in a viewport (48:04)

For more information, see our:

• UCS documentation 
• Using Work Areas webinar

 

9. (Admin) REDEFINEBLOCK & Other Hidden Commands (48:18)

We offer several features that are available only as keyboard commands rather than as buttons on the ribbons. Examples include DELREGAPPS (delete registered applications), IMPORTCSV (place a block in your drawing at the exact location of each coordinate in a CSV file), PRG (automates the three-step AutoCAD PURGE command, which purges objects from your drawing), and TEXT2ATTRIB (converts text within a callout block to an attribute, a piece of dynamic text that allows “smart” objects to take on different values when placed in a drawing).

 

See our list of secret keyboard commands for more information. 

 

10. (Details) Saving and Placing Details (49:45)

Overview of our detail-building tools, including Detail Templates, dimensions, enlargement sections, and hatches (49:45)

 

Saving a detail into our system (51:28)

 

Adding a detail to a project and placing it in a sheet (51:48)

 

Calling out a detail in a drawing with a “smart” callout (42:20)

53:20 – end: Questions

Question: Is it possible to create the order in which the schedule is created? For example, can the quantity be in the leftmost column? (53:30)

Answer: We do offer several ways in which you can customize your schedules. However, although you can put the quantity before the name in the schedule, it’s not possible to put the quantity in the leftmost column. (In order to keep our scheduling tools simple, we needed to impose some limits such as this one.)

 

Note that a schedule is just a block. You can right-click on a schedule, select the Block Editor, and move any column to the location of your choice. Keep in mind that if you regenerate the schedule, it will not respect these changes. However, note that even if you have to do something like this, you’ll still save a lot of time by using our scheduling tools. (54:45)

 

Question: Can I include the quantity and the name when calling Reference Notes, instead of just the number? (56:05)

Answer: We have that option as a wishlist item as of this recording. For now, you can assign a detail to a Reference Note. Then, when you call out that detail, you can include the detail title and the Reference Note number.

 

Question: Can I display the row order in the Plant Schedule? For example, can I list existing trees before project trees? (57:19)

Answer: To an extent, yes. You can change the tree-shrub–Shrub Area–groundcover order. But you can run separate schedules for each plant type and arrange them in any way you want. Keep in mind that the system will include subcategories in the schedule as if they’re categories, allowing you to manipulate the order to meet your needs.

 

Question: Will Land F/X have a Revit package someday? (58:53)

 

Answer: Yes we will. It’s currently in progress, and it’s a natural next step from our Rhino plugin, which we’ve just released.