Landscape design software is used by

landscape architect A landscape architect is a person who is educated in the field of landscape architecture. The practice of landscape architecture includes: site analysis, site inventory, site planning, land planning, planting design, grading, storm water manageme ...

landscape design Landscape design is an independent profession and a design and art tradition, practiced by landscape designers, combining nature and culture. In contemporary practice, landscape design bridges the space between landscape architecture and garde ...

ers and

garden designer A garden designer is someone who designs the plan and features of gardens, either as an amateur or professional. The compositional elements of garden design and landscape design are: terrain, water, planting, constructed elements and buildings, p ...

s to create planting, softworks, groundworks and hardworks plans before constructing a

landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the ...

. There are two levels of software available,

amateur An amateur () is generally considered a person who pursues an avocation independent from their source of income. Amateurs and their pursuits are also described as popular, informal, autodidacticism, self-taught, user-generated, do it yourself, DI ...

and

professional A professional is a member of a profession or any person who works in a specified professional activity. The term also describes the standards of education and training that prepare members of the profession with the particular knowledge and skil ...

. The former is usually aimed at simple visualization of a garden design, whilst the latter provides tools that allow stylistic representations of a design to be accurately labelled and dimensioned for

contractors A general contractor, main contractor or prime contractor is responsible for the day-to-day oversight of a construction site, management of vendors and trades, and the communication of information to all involved parties throughout the course of ...

to interpret and land authorities or

local government Local government is a generic term for the lowest tiers of public administration within a particular sovereign state. This particular usage of the word government refers specifically to a level of administration that is both geographically-loca ...

to sight and approve or otherwise. Since the advent of the

personal computer A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or tec ...

, several software packages have come into existence. The main professional software being Idea Spectrum's Realtime Landscaping Architect, CS Design Software's CS Artisan, LANDWorksCAD, Keysoft Solutions' KeySCAPE LandCADD, Landmark, PRO Landscape, Structure Studio's VizTerra, VisionScape's VirtualProperty Architect, Visual Impact's Earthscapes, and Asuni's Lands Design. Professional landscape design software requires detailed information to be output for contract documentation, which will usually constitute drawings, specifications and reports (schedules/bills of quantity). The more sophisticated landscape design software solutions automate the process of generating reports (schedules/bills of quantity) from intelligent data in the drawing; such intelligence is usually contained within labels (annotations) which include, in the case of planting, automatic calculation routines to determine the number of individual plants based on plant spacings (centres) per area or length. When labelled areas or lengths are modified (stretched or shrunk), associated labels are recalculated at the same time as reports (schedules/bills of quantity) contained in or associated with the same drawing.

Features

Below is a list of some features provided by such software: * Video Tutorials * Digital Photo Import * 3-D View creation * Plant Encyclopaedia * Plant Selector * Growth Zones & Hardiness Maps * Images of Plants and Objects * Print Shopping Lists * Print Design * Visualize Plant Growth * Outdoor Lighting * Irrigation Design * Outdoor Furniture * Reports/Schedules/Bills of Quantity * Labels/Annotation * Photorealistic Design Presentations * Generating Quotes, Invoices, Reports, Plant Information

Notes

References

Landscape architecture {{software-stub