Susan D

Shimi; Thanks for the advice. I’ll give you a mini-review of the Vectorworks and its capabilities once I get started with it. I’m also interested to find out about an add-on program called Doodle. It looks promising. I’ll let you know. Thanks again.

I still have not found an intuitive terrain modelling platform for us landscape architects.
Rhino can produce nice surfaces, which can be pulled and pushed to get the aethetics right, but its contours are inaccurate and, unlike Civil 3D, very static. Civil 3D on the other hand is very dynamic and great in live sections and contours, but falls…[Read more]

Thanks RFox. I’m going to download a trial copy of Rhino and play around with it. I did that a few months ago with AutoCAD Civil and found the new interface pretty intuitive. I still need something that’ll be a simple interface with a landscape design focus. Right now, I don’t need super high-quality rendering capabilities, but I would like to…[Read more]

Personally, I would recommend Rhino 4.0. It is an extremely easy to learn platform and combines 2D and 3D design quite well. Plus there are really good render engine plugins like Vray.

Rhino is also very good at importing and exporting a wide variety of different file types from Autocad to Digital Projects to Maya. I don’t know the exact pricing…[Read more]

im going to put up a new “discussion” called image of the week, ill post it on mondays because its everyone’s favorite day.

Hand Drawn Perspective with AD Markers Render (3.5 Hours)

Thanks guys. I’ve seen many of the previous discussions on this topic. Reviewing my last post, I realized I had mentioned I had been running LandCAD. That part was true. However, I have not been using LandCAD. In fact, I haven’t used it for a single project. I couldn’t get out of the tutorial phase. The LandCAD folks have offered me extremely…[Read more]

John – this question keeps popping up and is a testament of the range of aspirations, skill sets and experiences out there in the industry.
I have seen them all and to date, I have not seen THE tool for landscape architects. We have to use various platforms to deliver the wide range of services we provide.

There are quite a few parameters to this…[Read more]

I personally would go with Autocad over Vectorworks for a couple reasons. To start, Autocad is the industry standard as far as drafting goes so alot more people know the program. Also, as more schools push digital rendering, more and more students are using software like 3ds Max and Revit which don’t play well with Vectorworks linework. On the…[Read more]

I’ve just started a one-person design firm specializing in residential. I’m trying to decide between the various cad programs and think Vectorworks would be the best fit for me. I have owned EaglePoint LandCADD (2000) but was running with its stand-alone cad engine (not AutoCAD). Now, years later, I’m really thinking it’s time to try again with…[Read more]

ya the day I was supposed to come visit the mountains near me got 28 inches, it was amazing. ya i will keep that gradual change in mind for my next one it also looks darker on here because auto levels on photoshop is a bit over kill. but i definately didnt need to pick up the scarlet when doing the brick work i wanted to tear it up as soon as i did that

Likewise! i need to work on my colors though i have a tendency to go way too bold. how was seattle?

one more

heck why not…. i will throw a couple up there. these are using chartpak markers and colored pencil

For sure. I do have some of my drawings posted on my profile if you would like to check them out. I will post them soon though.

very nice renderings. I’ll definately get some of mine posted soon.

maybe we can do it right now…the sooner the better…who want to share their artwork first?…

Thanks for that book, that is great.

This is also a really good tutorial (in four steps) pretty complicated when it gets to the post processing stuff though.
http://en.9jcg.com/comm_pages/blog_content-art-129.htm

I’ve got a very straight forward manual for 3ds Max called “3ds Max Architectural Visualization.” I use it all the time for reference and unlike most program manuals its very easy to follow. Pretty much covers all the basics. Just follow this link and the password is “dallas”.

https://filestogeaux.lsu.edu/public/download.php?FILE=lattin1/313674GOBf0