Bob Luther

LandFX with FXCAD, Sketchup for 3D, Pixelmator for image processing (great Mac alternative to Photoshop). Wouldn’t change a thing!

Well I am disappointed in my industry if you are the future… This whole conversation is a joke, I get it you are just trying to get people fire up on a stupid topic, egg on my face… You are… Why do I even, I’m done!

Yes I use a whole crap load of fonts on a wide range of projects, it just isn’t the first or fifteenth thing I think about, in fact I love to make lists for my project to-dos, never have I written a to do… Find perfect font… I have had the opportunity to do a pirate/shark themed project and did use papyrus and who knows maybe I will put it on…[Read more]

Absolutely!

I often pull out my iPad in meetings to pull up manufacture websites to help a client pick stone, or benches, or to pull up images of plants to verify what the client wants. I have plugged my iPad into the tv in the clients conference room and done a power point presentation, I have used it to take quick photos, there are a wide range of great uses.

First off, it takes a huge amount of restraint not to just rip into how… Oh I almost went there. Two things graphic presentation (preliminary design) fonts may make a difference to give a theme or feeling, construction documents need clear crisp legible font/typeface so that a contractor can read and install the design.
A quick question, where…[Read more]

As silly as it sounds I have had consultants who we work with that reclines are done with photographs. We will plot the consultants work, redline it, pin it to the wall and take digital photos rather than scanning ( because of scanning costs and also scanner access) then email or Dropbox a bunch of photos and a note to explain the changes, then a…[Read more]

When you deal in fantasy and without a budget and have the perfect setting anything is possible… It is also one perfect vantage point of an idealic scene, in the design landscape we often don’t ask the viewer to stand in one exact spot to create the visual, we ask the view to move through the space, or use the space, or be apart of the space not…[Read more]

Hey cool piece of art for the guys in the Good Year Blimp to look at as they take shots of Santa Monica for the Lakers game on TNT. I love aerials like the one you posted as nobody will ever see that visual. Not a favorite of mine either, seem like something else could fill the space better than 50 paths to nowhere.

We use Sketchup every day to design elements of the landscape and produce construction detal, we use it for creating bases for hand renderings or for simple exhibits that can be sent to various people with in the design team very quickly. A lot of firms send out their high end modeling/rendering to asain firms who can create high quality photo…[Read more]

Autocad with LandFX
Microsoft Office (email, memos, transmitttals)
Sketchup
Photoshop
Illustrator
Microsoft Publisher (use InDesign if available)
PowerPoint
 

Yes I am contradicting myself, by pointing out that ASLA does not take the steps to promote the industry, they should look outside the box but do not. Would celebrity endorsement help? it couldn’t hurt! If Oprah had a special on Landscape architecture and the role of LA’s on the Green industry it would reach and educate more people in a single…[Read more]

STOP waiting for ASLA to promote the industry, if you want to promote LA’s in the green industries you need to promote yourself and put yourself on a team that competes for RFP’s and RFI’s you need to educate the architects and engineer’s as to what you can add to their team ASLA will never do that for you. The Brad Pitt Story is a perfect example…[Read more]

it depends on what you are trying to accomplish… I think for most simple models sketchup is the new industry pick. For high end complex modeling Rhino and Max seem to be the standard.

for a medow area you should look into a mix of grasses. for a mono-crop planting (single species) blue fescue (more architectural look) or mexican feather grass (wild meadow look) then to mix it up you could add some muhlenbergia (deergrass) for some size and variation.

ABSOLUTELY… a good choice but file sharing (to autocad users) and base import can be a bit of a trick without autocad.

only if the client tries to change the information in the legend or callouts. Because it is all linked information any changes to the plans done on a non-LandFX machine will break the links, but if you are just sharing location of plant the non-LandFX machine just see the blocks like any other drawing.

it also helps to have a city built before the automobile… Venice was designed to be moved through by foot and by boat are there even any cars in Venice? I don’t really remember seeing any cars at all… so is that really a good city to use as the baseline? maybe Amsterdam or London would be a better choice to study (old cities that now have…[Read more]

perhaps they were forced to drill in a mile deep water… were you on the board of directors that decided where to place the platform? Big government can be just as stupid. We need to find responsible ways to harvest energy. Oil is and always will be apart of this formula. Coal is “dirty”, the sun does not always shine, the winds do not always…[Read more]