Jeremiah Farmer

Lucas,
Having just returned from the ASLA Expo, and our customer appreciation party there, I can relay the vastly common sentiment among our users, is that the Land F/X experience is like no other — the service, the quality of product, the response time, and so on.
Go ahead and grab a trial of Land F/X, and I’m fairly certain you’ll appreciate…[Read more]

Hi Deborah,
I’m the CEO and Developer for Land F/X.
Being on a Mac certainly does put you in a spot in terms of just testing our software, as you would at a minimum need to purchase Parallels and a license of Windows.
However, we have an all Mac office here, and Parallels allows us to run AutoCAD, as well as some other PC-based software such as…[Read more]

Well said x2.
–J

It just all depends on how you want to define “BIM”.
In the world I deal in, our clients need results.  They do not care if it satisfies some made-up term, or uses Proxy Objects or Cloud Services, or any other particular buzzword of the day.  They need to get plans done, have the quantities correct, have the plan accurate, and interface with o…[Read more]

The BIM portion you are referring to is done in SketchUp, and can be exported to open file formats (IFC, Cobie, etc.).
I am well aware of the capabilities of the software you keep referring to, yet you are apparently ignorant of the capabilities of our software.  So I don’t see where this discussion can lead.
–J

Again, from the UK BIM Task Force directly:
“little of direct relevance to landscape yet”.
And actually, rootball clashes is the number one request from our users in terms of clash detection.
I get that you like BIM, that’s great.  Let’s just agree to disagree on how well it works for LA.  Right now I have to get back to work.
–J

We stick with standard AutoCAD objects, so the resultant dwg file can be opened by anybody, does not require additional libraries to view, modify, print, etc.
This is called Event-driven development, in contrast to Object-driven.  So only when using our tools do the “objects” in the drawing have intelligence.  Our object types are Plants (Tree, S…[Read more]

I don’t want to get drawn into an argument on the subject, but I feel pretty strongly that “BIM” as it is thrown around doesn’t fit very well at all for Landscape Architecture.  Consider particularly:
– a database of Manufacturers and Model numbers, with warranty information, fire code validation, etc. — this does not apply to landscape at all,…[Read more]

Why don’t you try out Land F/X?
We’ve been doing BIM for Landscape Architects for eight years now.
We personally don’t like the term “BIM”, as it by definition doesn’t apply to Landscape Architecture.
–J

I had some email correspondence with some of the BIM Task Force in the UK.
I felt that one of the most important points to stress regarding Level 2 compliancy was this:
“A quick review shows little of direct relevance to landscape yet”.
In terms of attempting to actually satisfy Level 2 requirements, that would require generating a BIM…[Read more]

First, if you have 2013, it’s not the full $4,200 to upgrade to the next year.
Although the changes from year to year will never be that stark, putting it off for a number of years will guarantee a large amount of downtime as you acclimate to the now dramatic changes.  Staying back a few years is also going to make it more challenging for new…[Read more]

It’s really unfortunate, but a few firms cling to this really inappropriate way to handle plotting.
Color based plotting works great for the AEC industry, and most firms use that, with CTB files to correlate a layer color to a plot thickness. It’s elegant and it works. Meanwhile, Named Plot Styles were developed for those in the Mechanical,…[Read more]

Macbook Pro.
That way you are mobile, and can have both Mac and PC environments.

–J