Activity

A prize wheel is always a good ice breaker. Something interactive that gets people to stop at your booth always helps. You don’t want to be too gimmicky, but something that will catch peoples attention.

Around here it is pretty standard for d/b companies to put together some kind of display, even if it is just a small booth. Usually some pavers and a segmental retaining wall in place of a folding table and some shrubs and flowers artfully arranged. It doesn’t have to be fancy.

Good work, though I would add more (or enlarge) persepctives to give your portfolio some punch. Plans and analysis are great, but they put people to sleep

Brad,

I would like to speak to you about setting up a workshop in Chicago. 
Contact me at emergingprofessionals@il-asla.org

Do you stand out?
How?

Start with that

Hello all, I’ve gotten some emails about post in this thread.  I’m sorry to inform you guys but I decided to not major in LA, I’ve decided to major in Interactive design & media.  I however do have a friend whom has just graduated from the LA program at my school.

I don’t think I ever posted my work from high school, it’s more architecture st…[Read more]

Great thanks very much

What  a great article. They had a similar discussion on public radio here locally about six months ago.

We use Mac Pros which are super nice computers but pretty expensive. A few of the guys from work have iMacs at home and say that it works fine. I guess it depends a bit on how big / detailed your vectorworks files are. If you contact your Vectorworks rep they should be able to give you some pretty good advice. I’m looking at getting a Mac Book Pro…[Read more]

Appreciate your feedback John… Are you running on iMac or Mac Pro? Trying to figure out minimum configurations/spec to run VW AND SU!

We use vectorworks on Macs at Environmental Partnership. It is quite popular in the landscape industry in Australia. The Landmark add on is great for planting plans. Vectorworks is better on Macs because of the quartz imaging / transparent layers. Started off doing 3d in Vectorworks but have recently changed over to SketchUp – much more intuitive…[Read more]

Great info Glenn… Many thanks!
When working within a team/consultants environment… how do you manage site plan/building footprint revisions… can you xref dwg. like in Autocad?

Michael —
Get some hard sciences under your belt if you wander into LARCH — your designs will actually be viable versus strictly conceptual. It’s a tough career, you have to have a passion for it.
 

I’ve had a few 42″ 800ps working simultaneously an we worked them HARD. (affectionately referred to as “spock’s coffins) and more recently I used a Z6200 which has better photo quality. Both were pretty much bullet proof machines. Though with the 800’s, we often did direct prints rather than using the print server. For some reason, the onboard…[Read more]

Thanks, Andrew and Dave! Others suggested the HP design jet 800, too, Dave. I think it’s a popular one among architectural firms. We ended up purchasing the HP T790 44″. We are anxious to plot, so we went with the most cost-effective one that could be delivered ASAP. This one plots color–good for both CAD drawings and GIS color maps. The HP T790…[Read more]

99% of what we do is for residential pools and we use Pool Studio.  They have a landscape program called Viz Terra that is similar, but I don’t have any real experience with it.  Pool Studio is flat out the best way we’ve found to communicate our ideas to the clients (and that equates to more sold projects).  Being able to see in 3D what they ar…[Read more]

we use an HP designjet 800ps 42″.  got it refurbished from a place online called Minnesota Computers several years ago.  can’t remember the cost but I think around 1K give or take a couple hundred.  Great service from them, enough to buy from them again when the need arises.  Ink use is great.  Doesn’t scan, but we don’t have a huge need for over…[Read more]

Hi Cara,
Great question!  I have used the KIP 3100 in the past and have liked how it performed for the most part.  It is a scanner/plotter combo with slim dimensions that work well in a small space because you can stand it up against a wall.  The only two problems that I encountered were the scan quality and the paper feed.  
The scan quality is n…[Read more]

The hard thing is that the drafter is extremely limited without the input of the person in charge.
 
It is oftened assumed that you can grab a trained person or one with several years of experience, throw him or her into a chair and they will produce the plans in the absence of the principal. That can work for existing conditions plans and cookie…[Read more]