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.
@bmike is correct, you can collect component numbers through SU! Though my gut says this is a slower and more cumbersome way to achieve your desired outcome. If you have plant groups of say 10 or 20 plants, you can easily position / edit and count up groups in LayOut. LayOut is seriously fast to work with for planting schedules.
@DeadTomorrow → I would do it in Sketchup. You can use components and components are just so much easier to work with because you can control their properties etc. even after the fact. You can scale them and rotate them so you can even create some randomness in your plans. You can count them easily just by clicking on one and the property window will tell you how many there are in your model. You can use layers to make them 2D AND 3D at once:
I once had the fun little task of placing 20000 bushes in a landscape. Used the Random Tools plugin for that task, experimented a bit with it and had it done in minutes.
So yeah - go 3D and use layout as output.
Maybe even use a different tag for every type of bush, this way you can hide them in Layout if you just want to show the shrubs for whatever reason…
I don’t suppose anyone knows of an online example of creating a complex planting plan in Layout do you? I just can’t get my head fully around how to create a planting plan with say 50 - 100 different species of plant in 2D in an easy way with it, but I am probably missing something.
It’s possible…but consider that if you only use LayOut for planting plans, you have 2 disadvantages:
You’re working on a scaled page layout, and not real world 1:1 dimensions - this means all of your plant symbols need to be correctly scaled to your page.
You’ll lose out on the ability to add 3D plants into your 2D symbols in order to visualize the design in section, axo, or perspective.
One process that I started, but haven’t fully implemented (because I don’t do planting plans anymore) is to start with CAD blocks. Most landscape designers have used or have access to a library of 2D CAD symbols. Once imported into SketchUp, the Blocks automatically become Components - which is great for selections, counts, edits, etc.
Step 1. Layout your planting plan in SketchUp just as you would by hand or in CAD. Pro Tip: Take the time to name your plant symbol components the plant name it represents…this way when you do your take offs later, it’s clear how many of what you have.
Step 2. Continue to build your model around the plants (or the other way around). 2D and 3D elements can co-exist and be organized/toggled on or off via Tags and Scenes. *Notice how the callout text is Auto-referencing the plant (ie component) name.
Step 3 (optional). Here is where it gets interesting. You can embed a 3D plant component inside of your 2D symbol (be sure to assign it to its own tag so it can be toggled on and off!). This way you can switch between your planting plan view and 3D rendering view instantly. If a plant changes or moves location? No problemo as all of your counts, views, etc all update instantly.
I create complex landscape plans in SketchUp.
Layout is just the Paperspace end of the process, not a design/modelling tool.
Eric’s workflow is correct.
Generate Report in SketchUp is the place to start for Schedules. Its easy to start, then customise with more info (using Fields within SketchUp such as Price, Material, etc). Since it links out to Excel you can link or add other data for your project, such as supplier URLs, notes to the contractor, or updated pricing tables from 3rd party sources. THEN it goes into LayOut.
You must remember that the point of all this landscape design isn’t a 2d plan but a 3d environment where things aren’t always flat (unless you live in a very flat place!) Rendering using Vray or Enscape would be the natural progression from a sketchup model. If that’s part of your future workflow then you can use high quality 3d plant models as Assets and build your 2d Symbol and Schedule Library alongside them.
Getting more advanced with SKP will allow you to accurately design in accordance with site modelling aspects such as sun and shadows, plan overland flow paths, drainage/irrigation, different planting medium and soil strata, and all sorts of 3d components.
Your comment about leader text is interesting. One pain point for us is the relationship between SketchUp leader texts and LayOut text callouts. We can add Species references (eg a few letters) to the Skp symbol, but then it doenst usually render very well in LO when you get more than a dozen or so entities on the page.
Adding leader text LO is possible and works well, but very slow (manual placement within each instance), and non-repeatable if the design changes significantly.
Is there any way of making them linked together (Placed in SKP but editable within LO)?
Another area for Landscape Architecture which is relatively underdeveloped within the SKP/LO ecosystem is the ability to report on Areas (using generate report). Areas are fundamental to things like Plant densities, soil/much volumes, lawn, etc. I haven’t yet seen a reliable and straight-forward way of utilizing Areas (face materials, or groups/components) as quantifiable elements for scheduling or analysis. Do you have any guidance around that?
Good questions. You can separate your leaders from you plan (while still remaining attached to your SU model).
Ex: Here I have two viewports stacked on top of each other. The top viewport was moved to it’s own layer called ‘Labels’…the bottom on the layer ‘Plans’. The top (labels) viewport’s rendering model was changed to ‘Hybrid.’ This allows for clean crisp vector text while leaving the plan Raster and keeping LO performant.
Regarding Quantities. I get you that Generate Report still leaves something to be desired. It may be just as easy to run the calcs per species and note the quantities in the label or legend. Of course the downside to this is that it’s not ‘real time’ and that if you change the design/planting layout…you’ll need to update your calcs again.
Here I selected one component and chose ‘Select all instances’ from the ‘Select’ Context Menu. The total count is listed in Entity Info (15). I then can (optionally) manually enter the count into the label.
Then Generate Report…choosing ‘Group by - Definition’…and then ‘Report - Quantity’. **Be sure to check ‘current selection’ so you get only your plant symbols and nothing else.
If LayOut was able to render Text “above” other objects, then a lot of issues would be solved.
(Im thinking about things like Gradient Lines, Contour labels and RL spotheights, which are stuck to the face, but always get clipped when displayed in SKP and LO)
Thanks - but not quite.
The “explode” labels function is sometimes helpful as a last-resort to getting things printed for a client issue.
I asked about reporting on AREAs.
Component/Entity reporting is fine using Generate Report. I use it all the time and it’s very helpful. Manual counting and tabulating, by the way, is only practical for the smallest/simplest of projects where non-critical items are being counted. We professionals expected not to spend time counting components and manually entering information into a table (also; Copy & Paste from the Entity Info field still doesn’t work in Windows…so the process has become extra-slow and error prone!..so how it’s greyed out?).
There are some powerful extensions for extracting Areas from a model into a table (eg Fredo’s Report Area tools)
However this introduces an entirely different workflow and reporting system (not to mention paid extensions with a…“unique”… user interface).
All we really need is for Generate Report to be able to report on the area of specified Face Materials, representing “lawn” “mulch” “groundcovers” etc. The Feature’s been talked about and requested since at least 2015
I strongly believe that this “missing function” as a native tool would greatly enhance SketchUp’s ability to prepare landscape plans, as well as architectural and urban planning outputs.
