Here are links to some of the plant database files delivered with gCADPlus. Each is a text file with the extension .gcp and can be viewed by attaching the file to a gCADPlus drawing or even if you do not have gCADPlus, they can be opened using a text editor or Excel.
Open plant lists with Excel
Here is a small movie showing how to download a plant list and view it in Excel. Click to see the data file, right click and choose SaveAs and make sure your downloaded file has the extension .gcp
The main gCADPlus plant list – GardenCAD.gcp (contains > 500 entries)
A plant database file used in a training exercise in C3 of the gCADPlus user guide
A plant database for species useful in Florida
A plant list of species suitable for edible gardens in the tropics
A plant list for British Columbia
A plant list for Canberra, ACT Australia
A plant list for culinary herbs
A plant list for the Darling Downs, Toowoomba, Queensland
A plant list for an English cottage garden
A plant list for Western Europe
Use new plant lists in landscape design software
If you would like to try this for yourself, start gCADPlus (download and install a demo version from this page) and from the gCADPlus drop menu, select “Attach gcp file from the gCADPlus drop menu and select “Attach gcp file”. A view similar to that shown below will be presented.
Labelling symbols in landscape designs
Every landscape design needs a plant identifier. This can take many different forms – individual plants can be tagged with a text indicator, species can be identified by their symbol in a plant schedule (table) or tagged by using the leader command. Experience has shown that labelling each plant with a leader is not particularly helpful to the client or construction team as the drawing becomes very crowded. A better solution is to create a plant list that’s specific for the locality involved. gCADPlus uses text files to hold species data. Once the text file is attached to the design, each species symbol is tagged and a tool on the gCADPlus menu does the rest. The number of each species used in the design is counted automatically and a plant schedule (species list) generated. This saves much time.
How to rearrange the column order in a gCADPlus database (gcp) file when the custom plant schedule tool failed. We take a file in which the order of columns does not match the gCADPlus standard, import into Excel, change column order and export to a TAB separated txt file. That file is renamed and used in a gCADPlus drawing to successfully draw a custom plant schedule.