How to create, edit and use your own plant Figures in LANDWorksCAD v5.x It is really quite simple to set up and develop your own drawing styles using LANDWorksCAD. Most clients prefer their own look and feel as it helps make their drawings unique. In this tutorial we explore ONE method of creating and using user modified plant Figures for presentation drawings. These figures include Bitmaps and the use of them includes adding shadows as part of the style. Procedures covered in this tutorial are: Creating Your Own NEW Plant Figure from an existing Figure 1. Open an existing plant Figure file 2. Check the plant Figure for correct Position, Size, Layer, Colour, Style, and Weight 3. Save as a New Name 4. Edit or add a Bitmap Plane 5. Check change and add items 6. Save the plant Figure file Assign the Figure to your database 7. Assign your Figure to a Plant in the Database Inserting your Plants 8. Select and Insert your plant into the drawing 9. Switch display modes Creating Shadows 10. Copy your plant Figures away from drawing 11. Explode the copied Figures 12. Delete unwanted entities to leave just planes 13. Change Planes Layer, Colour and type 14. Move shadow planes back into the drawing 15. Arrange display order Explore Layer Switching 16. Switch various layers on and off 17. Compare speed difference.
1. Run LANDWorksCAD and FILE>OPEN an existing plant Figure file (one that you like the shape of) from the \Figures\Plants\.. folder. 2. Select a position inside your plant to check if there is a surface Plane there. Many of the plants supplied with the software already have a Plane on them and because they are white they can not be immediately seen. Some figures however may not have any Palnes in them. Double click on the Plane to find out what Layer and what type of surface Plane it is.
If it was created correctly the Plane should be on Layer 600 and will probably be colour 254 (nearly white) by default with a 0.2 to 0.5 transparency value (20% - 50% transparent) Do the same for the lines and you should find that the they are on a Layer other than 600.
Now measure the plant diameter; it should be about 1000mm. (You can measure by drawing a line from one side to the other and check the length display of the line as you drag. You don t have to actually finish drawing the line - we are just checking to make sure it s about the right size. Check too that the plant is positioned so that its centre is at x=0 y=0 (as shown above) 3. Now use FILE>SAVE-AS and save this as a New Name in to the..\figures\plants\.. folder. 4. Set the current Layer to 600 and make sure the Plane type is set to Solid Fill. (You can use the Eyedropper Icon and pick the existing Plane to do this if you wish). If the existing Plane is not the right shape, delete it and reinsert a new plane as desired. <img
WARNING: Set the Bimap Width and Height value to reflect the size it represents in your drawing in real life. Be really careful not to have a small value like 1 for the Bitmap Width and Height as this will cause the bitmap to be drawn 1000 time in both the X and Y direction (That s 1000 x 1000 = 1,000,000 times) to fill a 1000mm diameter tree!. This will lead to the software taking so long to display the bitmap that you have to restart the software or take a vacation TIP: By creating and using YOUR OWN bitmap images you will be able to truly have your own unique look and feel. You can create bitmaps by using software such as or Photo-Shop or our easier-to-use PhotoImpact editing suite or even by drawing by hand with pencil or Pantone pens etc and then scanning the image to a JPG file. There are also thousands to choose from on the web. 5. If you like you can also add some seasonal detail to your plant such as flowers. Simply select a different Layer to place them on (suggest 602) and add the detail. Here we have added some simple orange Points to represent flowers in bloom.
If required, use the Arrange commands to make sure that the Plane is at the back and does not obscure the other entities. Check and change any aspects of this new plant such as line weight, style and colour until you are happy with the look of your new plant Figure. You can even do a check print to your printer to see how it will look when printed. 6. FILE>SAVE your figure as it is now complete. Remember: Make a separate backup of all your own Figures and Bitmap files in a safe place other than on your machine in case your machine should die or you upgrade your software and accidentally overwrite the contents of the folders.
7. Next we need to assign this Figure to one of the plants in our Excel database. You can do this by opening Excel and editing the database file directly or by Opening the Insert Proposed Plant dialog and ticking the Edit option. Select the plant to modify (or add a new plant) and click in the Detailed Figure square to browse for the new figure file and Open it. It will show up in the display window but will not show the bitmap.
Repeat this procedure for each of the plants you wish to use and then SAVE the DATABASE. If you are using a large database such as the one supplied with LANDWorksCAD v5.9, saving will take a long time. Editing the Excel file directly is recommended in this case rather than though LANDWorksCAD itself. (If unsure, see section in Landworks Reference manual on how to do this)
Let s now insert the plant in our drawing. In this example we have use a combination of different types of surface plane to describe the ground areas. You can use bitmap plane but solid fill and traditional hatching can also be used. Before we start inserting plants, make sure that you have OPTIONS>FIGURE set as follows: 8. Use the Plant Insert commands to insert the new plant. Then copy it as desired in your drawing. 9. If you have not updated your software recently you may find that the plant s bitmap Plane does not display.
To resolve this simply select the Plant Display Switch icon and select to display the Basic Figure. Then after it has displayed the basic figure repeat the command, only this time select the Show Detail Figure Option. The plants should regenerate themselves correctly displaying the planes in the figures. Now let s create some shadows: 10. Select all the trees you wish to create shadows for and COPY them to one side of your drawing. (You can use the Selection Mask tool if they are difficult to select).
11. Now use the Explode command to explode the Figures into their original entities. Do not Group them. 12. Use the Selection Mask to select everything in these copied trees except Planes And then drag a selection window around the trees and press DELETE to remove all the lines and points etc. You should be left with just the Planes and their boundary lines 13. Select only the boundary lines and change them to be on Layer 605 (using the Layer Default/Change command) Select the Planes and change them to Layer 603 Change the Planes colour to Black (using the Colour Default/Change command).
Change the Planes to a Solid Fill, of 0.5 Transparent 14. Select and drag your shadow planes into position 15. Now select the original Trees (not the shadows) and use the Arrange command to bring them to the Front, so they are not obscured by the shadows.
Because each shadow is an individual plane you can move them further away from the larger trees to indicate greater height Now use the Layer display Switch to switch off the Flowers we drew on Layer 602 and the lines around the edges of the shadows. Whilst the use of transparency can produce some excellent effects in terms of being able to partially see through it does also dilute the colour of the transparent object. IMPORTANT The use of TRANSPARENCY in your drawing will dramatically slow the refresh rate of your model on screen. This will affect Zooming and Panning and even selecting. If you are using transparency then it may be a good idea to switch Planes off until absolutely necessary. In future versions we are looking at switching transparency on or off as you work to improve speed. TIP: A good use of Layers will assist you in selecting the different items such as trees, shadows, edges, etc TIP: Do not over complicate your Plant figures when you create them as this too will affect the speed that the machine can repaint the entities on the screen. TIP: Whilst the supplied figures are all set to be approximately 1000mm Dia, you can make them smaller or larger if you know they will be used for dramatically different sized plants. In this way they will display more accurately.