Shades of Green 50 Using gcadplus for landscape design Keith West, Sylvie Bion & Annette Tiemersma gcad +
About the authors: Keith West is the founder of Design Cad, a software developer company based in Adelaide South Australia. He has had more than 20 years teaching the use of CAD software to a wide variety of students. While delivering lectures to landscape design students he became aware of the need for a simple mouse driven CAD software application - hence gcadplus. Keith holds a BSc with Honours and a PhD in plant physiology. Design Cad s web site is www.designcad.com.au and the web site supporting gcadplus is www.plus.designcad.com.au Sophie Bion and Annette Tiermersma are professional landscape designers with their own practices based in Paris. They both have many years experience and were among the first international users who saw the possibility of using gcadplus to improve productivity and communicate better with clients. Sophie s web site is: http://www.delafleuraujardin.fr/ Annette s is: http://www.lesherbesfollesdannette.com/ Our sincere thanks go to the following gcadplus users for their generous assistance and permission to show their work: Chris Maler, Ross Ubergang, Dan Hemmerling, Dietmar Winkler, David Brown, Pam Gurner Hall, Alex Niesch, John McIver, Tim West, Paul Ashford, Aaron Sperry, Sue Neale, Kevin Brennan, Bridey Oliver, Annette Warner, Fiona Webber, Giovanni Luis, Yvonne Pecujac, Robert O Reilly, Tracey Obst, Michael Stitt, Nieve Smyth, Arbel Zhao, Damian Andrews.
Contents Why use gcadplus? 13 CAD and landscape plans 14 Communicating with CAD plans 18 Working remotely - saving paper and postage 20 Copying and pasting materials can save drafting effort 22 Working in either metric or Imperial units 24 Using 3D models 25 CAD drawings can show panache 27 One file - many layout sheets 27 Work on large sites 29 Import GPS 30 GIS images - fast display 30 Interacting with other software 31 Using survey work as a base 32 gcadplus - an arborist s tool 34 Costing design work 35 Working with gcadplus 37 The gcadplus interface 38 Creating new designs 39 Coordinate systems 40 Site measurements - creating base plans 41 More on the drawing interface - the Properties box 42 Status line switches 44 A brief summary of the purpose of each STATUS switch: 45 SNAP 45 GRID 45
ORTHO 45 POLAR 45 OSNAP 45 LWT 45 ENT 46 REGEN 46 The POLAR status line switch 47 Plant List 48 Mini layer tool 49 The symbol library 50 Exploring the interface - getting your hands dirty!........... 52 A quick check print 54 The importance of the right click menu 56 Drop down menus 57 View drop down menu 58 View menu - workspaces 59 Saving custom workspaces 60 Help while working with gcadplus 61 The Help drop down menu 61 The gcadplus drop down menu 62 The Tools drop down menu 63 Tools menu - language switching 64 The Window drop down menu 65 Selecting entities 66 Direct selection 66 Window selection 66 Selecting entities by window-inside 66 Using a Crossing Window 66 The importance of the Shift and Control keys 69
Noun/verb vs. ve rb/noun selection 69 Understanding the gcadplus coordinate system 70 Cartesian coord inates 70 Polar coordinates 70 Entering Cartesian coordinates 70 Relative coordinates 71 Polar coordinates 71 Relative polar coordinates 72 Grid 73 Polar Tracking and the ORTHO mode 73 Object snaps 75 Function keys 76 Background color 77 Global settings 77 Drawing settings 77 Drawing description 77 User strings 77 Configuring Toolbars 78 Drawing with gcadplus 79 A word on designing landscape logos 80 Design elements in landscape logos 80 Building a CAD version of your own logo 82 Raster image versions from gcadplus drawings 82 Exercise: Sketch a logo and make a CAD drawing of it 83 Exercise: Create a design for a small space 85 Brief - illustrate ideas for small garden spaces 85 Create a plant schedule 89 Download data file 90 Preparing to print 92
Improving the presentation in Layout space 93 Add title block and a landscape design logo 93 Additional layouts 94 Constructing a section view 95 Elevation view 96 Return to the design 97 Print (plot) to a fixed scale 98 Handling title block information 98 Location 99 Dimensions 99 Add lighting design 100 Add setout points 102 Irrigation design 102 Export gcadplus designs to 3D modelers (SketchUp) 103 Option 1................................. 103 Option 2................................. 103 Assign Z values 104 Using entity snaps effectively 109 Every entity has a number of handles 110 Using entity snaps............................ 111 The osnap Near option 113 An alternative method for setting osnap options 114 Snapping to the quadrant of a circle - the Grips option 115 Running osnaps 116 Visual clues to osnap operation 117 Osnap indicators 117 Why use osnaps? 117 Text in gcadplus drawings 119
Text use 120 Types of text objects 120 Single line text 121 Aligning text 122 Use upper case text where possible 123 Paragraph text (MTEXT) 124 MTEXT spacing 125 Arc text 126 True Type Text 127 Text styles 128 A note on fonts available in the gcadplus environment 128 Hand lettered fonts 129 Creating a text style 130 Test possible fonts 131 Pre loaded styles 131 Modifying designs 133 Erase 133 Move 134 Rotate 135 Mirror 137 Join 138 Trim 139 Extend 140 Stretch 141 Break 142 Offset 143 Explode 144 Explode polylines 145
Fillet command 146 Draw order 147 Divide 148 Elevation 149 Set fixed scale 150 Fixed scale off 150 Match Properties 151 Align objects 152 Align objects - command line options 152 Align text 153 Introduce variation to symbols 154 Copse command 155 Handling line weights in gcadplus drawings 156 The LWT switch 156 The power of line weights? 157 Pens and line thickness 157 Line weights in title blocks 159 Monochrome vs. Color 161 The influence of the default line weight setting 161 Recommended approach 162 Managing linetypes 163 Default settings 164 Linetype patterns 165 Default linetype styles 165 Loading a new linetype file 165 Changing linetype properties of entities in a drawing 166 Changing current linetype style 167 The importance of linetype scale 167
Managing layout spaces 169 Model Space and Layout Space 171 Setting up a new layout 172 1. Check the size of your design in model space 172 2: Create a layout 173 3. Adjusting the view inside a floating viewport 175 4. Selecting viewports 177 Pasting illustrative images into layout space 179 Adding details to a new floating viewport 180 A note on printing 181 Printing a layout to a fixed scale in the USA (Imperial) system 182 USA scale factors 182 Sheet sizes 182 Fixed scales (Metric) 183 Adding images to layout spaces 185 The gcadplus menu 186 Labeling plant symbols 187 Text 187 Colored circle & text 188 Text labels as attributes 188 Automated plant schedules and lists 189 Selecting the plant schedule option 190 Attaching a plant list (.gcp file) 191 Creating new plant data files 194 Set data to a plant symbol 195 Removing data from plant symbol 195 Viewing a plant list 195 Show symbols with names 195 Draw plant schedule 195 Draw standard schedule 196 Draw schedule - custom content 197
Update a plant schedule 197 Plant schedule variations 198 Smart label tool 200 Broad scale planting 202 Creating a gcp file 203 Broadscale tagging an labelling steps 203 Building a broad scale plant list 203 Extract block data 205 Extract all blocks 205 Form of CSV file 206 Block list 207 Key information 207 Extract blocks - lighting 207 Extract all blocks from an area 208 Extract blocks by layer 208 Ground cover planting 209 Ground cover planting takes many forms 210 Option 1: Make ground cover 212 Option 2: Show tagged areas 213 Option 3: Print ground cover schedule 213 Extract plant schedule 215 Extract ground cover schedule 215 GPS 216 GPS in 216 Import Garmin GPX 218 Import GPS track 218 Store extended data 219 Furniture data 220 Paving.................................. 220 Decking 221
Irrigation 221 Grass 222 Lighting 222 Species 223 Google Earth 224 Link to URL 224 Highlight extended data 225 Extract stored data 225 Propagate stored data 225 Export gcadplus models to SketchUp 226 Further reading: 226 Shadow 226 Fill closed line with a pattern 227 Copy symbol along line 228 Insert Google maps/image 229 Plant palettes 233 URL entity 234 Write block 234 GIS 234 Tools 236 Distance 237 Using an area value 238 Measure and mark the area of closed polyline (and label) 239 Measure area closed polyline and label 240 Total the length of a series of polylines 241 Selection 241 Draw order - the entity stacking command 242 Purge 243
Drafting settings 243 Global Settings 243 Make raster - export a bit mapped image file 244 Plugins 245 Plant databases 245 SppDb - Species Database 245 Using native gcp plant database files 246 3. Online web databases 246 Sustainability calculator 248 Merge PDF 250 Points 251 Spot elevation 251 Setout point/peg marker 252 ID command 253 Grid lines 253 Section tool 256 Isolate layer 256 Check AutoCAD drawing 257 Language switching 257