Intro to Planting F/X for Revit® Plugin

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 is Land F/X and Planting F/X?
• What Makes Planting F/X Great?
• System Requirements
• Cost of Planting F/X
• Install Checklist
• Start a Planting F/X Project
• Plant Manager & Find Your Plant!
• Placing Plants in 2D & 3D
• Label
• Schedule
• Color Render
• Planned Development
• Questions & Answers from the Live Presentation

0:00 – 3:52: Intro/TOC

3:53 – 8:44: What is Land F/X and Planting F/X?

Add-on plugin for:

• Revit, AutoCAD (including Civil 3D), SketchUp, Rhino
  

Planting F/X includes the Planting tools:

• Automates many tedious tasks in Revit
• Connects to a species database of 47,000+ plants
• Auto-fills pre-set parameters
• Extensive tree and shrub family library with 2D symbols that look great and scale to specified width
• Group labels with quantity
• Place groundcover hatches on floors with spacing, and schedule.

Overview of our planting tools (6:53)

8:45 – 11:43: What Makes Planting F/X Great?

Support (8:45)

Client testimonials (Don't just take our word for it!) (10:30)

11:44 – 14:24: System Requirements

• Revit Installed (not LT) 2019 – current (as of presentation time)
• Latest 3 versions receive updates (2021 – 2023 as of presentation time)
  
  
• Follow Revit System Requirements
• Planting F/X doesn't add any additional needs
• Compatible with Revit installed on Mac with Parallels
  
  
• Multi-user office setup:
• Keep a "Library" folder on shared mapped letter drive
• Needs write access for all users
  
  
• 1 Planting F/X license per simultaneous user
• 10 users? Only 5 using PFX tools at once? You need 5 licenses.
• Irrigation F/X licenses will run planting tools in Revit, too, but no irrigation tools in Revit.
• Running Planting F/X in Revit and CAD on same computer at the same time? Just 1 license!

14:25 – 15:42: Cost of Planting F/X

Subscription $575/seat/year

What that's paying for?

• Technical support phone/email/ticket
• Great documentation, always being updated
• Growing family library
• Frequent updates with improvements and new tools
• Growing plant database with data verification by our in-house horticulturalist
• Live webinars like this, and all the recordings
• Shorter Power Tip videos

15:43 – 20:40: Install Checklist

1. Download latest installer to Downloads folder
2. Trials – fill in our Trial form.
3. Check the box Interested in Revit (and any other platforms)
4. In the notes, specify which version years of Revit, and that you watched this webinar.
5. Existing users: Submit ticket for download link.
   
   
6. Run from there
7. Installs on all compatible versions of Revit on the computer
   
   
8. Open Revit, and click Always Allow.
   
   
9. Open Planting F/X Ribbon, General Preferences
   
   
10. Set up Library folder
11. Must set up separate folders for each version year of Revit.
    
    
12. Good to go!

You may need to set the Shared Parameter Folder manually. (See Step 3 in our Revit Planting F/X install guide. (20:05)

20:41 – 23:16: Start a Planting F/X Project

23:17 – 34:11: Plant Manager & Find Your Plant!

Opening the Plant Manager (23:17)

Adding plants to a project (24:46)

• Finding a plant using filters (25:18)
• Searching for a plant (26:01)

Adding a plant to our master plant database (26:36)

Adding data to plants in the database (26:55)

Editing a plant (28:54)

Choosing 2D and 3D symbols for a plant (30:41)

Importing plants from another project (32:41)

34:12 – 44:22: Placing Plants in 2D & 3D

Placing plants in DD (34:11)

Placing plants in 3D (34:25)

Specialized plant placement tools (34:39):

• Using our Copy Along tools to place plants along a path, including topographic placements (34:39)
• Keyboard hotkeys for placing plants (37:11)
• Copying and placing plants using our Clone tool (40:17)
• Replacing one plant with another using our Mimic tool (4139)
• Using our Fill with Plants tool to quickly fill an area with plants (42:02)
• Placing a groundcover (42:50)

44:23 – 49:12: Label

Group Label (44:32)

Label by Connecting Line (45:33)

Editing existing labels using our Group Label tool (45:49)

Error checking labels using our Verify Labels tool (46:02)

Editing and error checking labels and plants using our Highlight tool (48:18)

Placed and unplaced plants in the Plant Manager (48:58)

49:13 – 51:09: Schedule

Placing a schedule and moving it between sheets (49:13)

51:10 – 52:27: Color Render

Turning Color Render on (51:10)

Changing plants' colors (52:07)

52:28 – 54:17: Planned Development

Planned development as of presentation time (52:28):

• Select Adjacent Plants
• Plan view symbol images in the schedule
• Natural Spacing for Fill with Plants
• Schedule Defaults in Plant Preferences
• Expanding the Symbol Library - All our existing CAD symbols
• Rootballs
• Concept Plants and Mixes
• Better connection with Enscape
• Twinmotion
• Lumion node Export in Revit
• Allow setting tree/shrub family color in Edit Plant
• Lots more into 2024

This list is fluid! Tell us what you really need.

If you can do it manually, we can usually automate to be faster for you, with less errors.

Select Adjacent Plants (52:55)

54:18 – end: Questions & Answers from the Live Presentation

Discussion on whether we'll offer connection to Lumion (Possibly later this year, but Twinmotion and Enscape are higher priorities, as a workaround for now we already offer that capability in SketchUp) (54:18)

Discussion on whether we'll offer hardscape, paving and site amenities (Paving will likely come later this year, and site amenities may be a bit farther out.) (55:44)

Installation and shared parameters (56:27)

The possibility of assigning a family symbol to a groundcover and filling it automatically (You can use our Fill with Plants tool for this purpose.) (57:08)

Custom family symbols (We hope to have a documented process for making your own, but we also encourage users to just let us know what they're looking for and our team may be able to create them.) (58:03)

Rootballs (Let us know what you're looking for, and we may be able to incorporate them. Also, you may be able to make your own.) (1:00:01)

If we have a sloped surface, often times we have to move our symbols up off the ground so that the symbol shows correctly. Is that also a problem with your 2D symbols? (We have them insert slightly off the ground so they aren't cut off.) (1:01:26)

How to place groundcovers on non-flat topography (Just slope the floor. Plus you can use specific plugins for placing floors more effectively.) (1:02:06)

Will Autodesk bring Civil 3D capability into Revit? Will there be a Revit F/X, kind of like there's an F/X CAD? (Short answer: No.) (1:03:10)

Do I need to get Revit? If so, what version? (Yes, you would need to purchase a Revit subscription from Autodesk to use our plugin. Note that you would need the full version, not LT.) (1:04:16)

Is Fill with Plants coming for the CAD side? (We would like to bring it to CAD, but the capability is a bit trickier on that side.) (1:04:39)

Is it possible to import a design from regular AutoCAD? (The answer is yes, and we show you how here.) (1:05:37)

Is the AWS server still necessary for the Revit plugin? (Yes, it requires Cloud Data, which runs on the AWS servers and requires a constant Internet connection.) (1:07:29)

Is it possible to label a group of plants with connecting lines without having to click each plant? (We'd love to achieve that, but the amount of code required may be prohibitive.) (1:07:43)

Is it possible to combine 2D and 3D views in one layout sheet? (It should be possible.) (1:08:46)

Can the lineweight of the symbols be altered to improve the hierarchy between outlines and details? (Yes, that is something we are working on. It's going to be fixed in a future version.) (1:10:39)

Additional Questions and (Answers):

Where will the recording be available to share internally? (All our webinars are available on our website.)

Will irrigation design interface with Revit? (At this point, irrigation design in Revit is all but impossible. Go ahead and Google it - are there any resources, forum posts, blog posts, anything at all? There's quite literally nothing. So everything from what object type to use for pipe and sprinklers and controllers, on through how best to handle the hydraulic modeling, is just a complete blank. Of note is that there used to be a prominent plugin for doing fire sprinkler design in Revit. They have pulled their product. So if Revit can't even properly produce a fire sprinkler design, then how could it possibly handle site irrigation? At a minimum, we would need several additional object types and categories. Without that, it would be nothing more than just drawing dumb lines. It makes absolutely no sense to engineer an ability to draw dumb lines in Revit. If you or anyone has any references, examples, anything at all on the subject you can send us, then please, by all means.)

Is the Planting F/X plugin for Revit a separate license? (A single Planting F/X license can be used simultaneously on AutoCAD, Revit, SketchUp, and Rhino. The license is locked by computer.)

We already have multiple LandFX licenses for planting and irrigation. Do we need to purchase a new license, or just upgrade to run the software in Revit? (Nope, the same license!)

Are they Lumion ready? (Lumion is challenging, in that plant assets need to manually assigned within Lumion. Our process from SketchUp is to generate separate files for each species of plants, allowing a somewhat straightforward of importing each and replacing the nodes with desired plant assets. But it is wildly cumbersome as far as we are concerned. We continue to chat with the Lumion people to see what can be done, but our understanding is that the fundamental architecture of the software, and how it sees plants as assets, is limiting in linking with a third-party provider like ourselves, as opposed to TwinMotion and Enscape, where we have a much simpler and more capable path forward.)

I have Revit/Bluebeam I pay for. Are you expecting me to subscribe for $575 too? (Yes. There are many plugins for Revit and other design software, and our app is competitively priced and well worth it.)

Will you email us this presentation with the install process? (The install documentation covers it!)

Do the site features (hardscape elements/concrete paving patterns, etc.) carry across to Revit as well? (Not currently, but also the native Revit capability for these is quite good. We hope to bring our Paver manufacturer connection to Revit later this year. However, this likely will get pushed to next year.)

Do pre-established plant lists carry over if they were established in CAD? (Yes. Both CAD and Revit can access the same project data in real time.)

Does the 3D Connection work the same ways as other programs still? Is there compatibility for site furnishings imports in location with selected Revit families? (The 3D connection works with Plants across all 4 platforms. Currently only SketchUp also supports Site Amenities and Lighting. The overhead in creating Revit families for the thousands of site amenities in our library is quite a cliff to scale.; We have started discussing this with our partner manufacturers, to see what can be done.)

Are there a lot of plants in the lowest hardiness zones (1-3)? (I show 10,791 plants currently tagged in those hardiness zones.

Did your new Amandii plant not come in? (Sorry, I wasn't watching. But it does add plants.)

Will rootballs be provided for planting symbols? This would be useful for working on structure. (Yes, we are well under way on adding rootballs. This will absolutely be added this year.)

Do you have resources available for setting up custom tree and shrub families? (It is wildly challenging to create high-quality plant family symbols that can be scaled by the software and are compatible with rendering. We continue to refine our process and have a sizable staff working on creating more. It's not really something that we envision as being done by the average user. We are quite open to suggestions for artistic style and so on, and can get that added to the library for all users.)

If I accidentally copy a plant symbol using the native Revit commands, can I use the Mimic tool to bring back the Land F/X plant data that was lost using the Revit Copy command? (You are welcome to copy them manually. They retain their data. But Mimic would also work in general.)

The new custom groundcover floor replaces the original floor? So we should make a "temp" floor, essentially? (Correct. This is why we include several "generic" groundcover floor types to use.)

What does Natural Spacing mean? (It is essentially between rectangular and triangular calculations. You can read more about it here.)

If I'm using the beta version of Planting F/X for Revit, will it update automatically when I log in to Revit? (Yes.)

Is there a way to place groundcover without replacing the floor? Can groundcover go on only part of a floor? (Groundcovers are floor objects, so you would need to split the floor.)