Landscape drawing tools help you design your lawn and garden area.
A landscape drawing is a virtual representation of what your garden layout will look like. These colored drawings are usually very detailed, featuring plants, patio brinks, water features, and buildings. Often, these drawings are created by professionals who are trying to pitch a landscaping idea to a client, but consumers can also visualize their new landscape using these programs.
Pro Landscape
Designed for industry professionals, this program is a two- (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) landscape designs program. You upload an image of your house, and you virtually draw in landscape objects, including plants, shrubs, and trees. The software comes with a library of 8,500 plants, water features, grass, and mulch. With the Image Editor, you generate a before and after image of your landscape, and you keep track of estimates and material lists with the Proposal feature. Produce a proposal simply by inputting tax rates and prices. With the Planner feature, 2D drawings of landscape designs grow, as you add items like irrigation systems, patios, and hard-scape items. Create legends of items and plant call outs (description of a particular area) with this feature. The Planner also calculates volume of needed mulch, fill and rock materials, tracks needed plants, and figures out area of hardscapes like pavers. As of 2010, this program starts at $1,195, and there is a 60-day money back guarantee.
SmartDraw
SmartDraw creates drawings using templates, and the drag-and-drop feature adds items to your design, including plants, shrubs, trees, pave stones, and edging. You see the layout of your design in 2D and 3D, including walkways, plant layout, and boundaries. In 3D, this helps you virtually walk through your landscape.You edit or create your own graphics, add lines and shapes to your drawings, while seeing the dimensions of all the objects on your drawing. SmartDraw features a Visual Processor, which automates the process of creating items like flowcharts, forms, maps, and graphics. The Visual Processor provides you with templates to help you quickly create these visuals. There is a shareware version of this product, which expires after seven days. Once the time period expires, you must purchase the full version, which costs between $197 ad $297, and there is a 30-day money back guarantee.
ConceptDraw Pro
Designed for both consumers and industry professionals, this comprehensive program helps to layout your own landscape drawing. You create drawings using templates and the objects' library, which include items like patios, plants, grass, fences, water features, and trees. Create your own objects, and export your drawings in to one of the following formats: Portable Document Format (PDF), HyperText Markup Language (HTML) and Microsoft PowerPoint. Connect objects to either a group of similar objects like a group of plants, or to each other like a pipe to a pipe. For example, if you group a set of plants within a flower bed, and decide to extend the size of the bed, the program resizes all the plants in the group. See how elements relate to one another, how they fit together and how additional elements work within an existing structure layout. Add objects in the ConceptDraw library to a document to see how these elements affect objects already in the plan, such as how a new tree's shadow affects a plant bed. This program pulls together all of your project documents and actively displays the structure's different levels. You see your structure plan either with or without actual buildings, and the layout of the supply lines. Access a shareware version of this program, which is free for 30 days. ConceptDraw Pro retails for $299 in 2010.
