One of the key features in Vectorworks Landmark is the ability to add plants (as components) from a library onto a 2D top down plan, allowing you to label them based on the component’s name, and then it also counts them up in a table allowing you to easily order all of those plants.
Last time I checked a couple of years ago, the Sketchup/layout methods of adding plants to 2D topdown plans were too basic to do this. I wondered if it’s progressed at all? I would prefer to use Sketch up and Layout but this ability to make complex planting plans (with thousands of plants made from perhaps a hundred of so different species of plants) is really essential for landscape design.
If you have component libraries of plants you can do the plan in SketchUp and then use a plugin or Generate Report to get a tally of your plants. Then use Layout to dimension and annotate and you could take the data from Generate Report into a CSV, Rich Text or Excel file and create a table of it in Layout.
Thanks, yeah I think the count is probably the least essential thing, now I think about it more. It is very useful but the main thing I’ve struggled with in the past with Sketchup is doing a proper detailed planting plan for large gardens. Something like the attached, where it can have hundreds if not thousands of different plants. I’ve always felt Sketchup is geared up for architects and hard landscapers, and not really designed for planting designers like me and a lot of the industry. Doing planting plans is the only reason I don’t use Sketch up as my main software, but perhaps that’s changed now. I love Sketch up for 3D.
LayOut is perfect for this! You could create pre-labelled plants or planting groups as a scrapbook library. By planting groups, meaning to create a large area of mass planting as a group > drag it to the page > double click to edit group > select / delete until you achieve the desired planting shape!
Or, looking at your plan, you could create texture images representing your mass plantings and create a clipping mask to these texture images once inserted from your scrapbook.
