The series of ‘how to’ tutorial movies posted here are designed to help designers learn to use gCADPlus landscape design software by developing a real job. We conclude with the printing of the professional landscape CAD plan shown below.
These tutorials are for gCADPlus users working in the metric environment. If you are working in the USA where feet is your base measure, please visit the gCADPlus USA site.
Draw the footprint of a building
Lesson 1: We will assume that you have visited the site that’s ready to be landscaped and have made a simple ‘mud map’ with dimensions of important features including the footprint of the house. The first step is to plot the footprint of a house. So if you have not already done so, start gCADPlus and use File > New and select the template Lesson 1 -AspenStone
This movie shows how to draw the footprint of a house on a site. It is often the first step in developing a landscape plan.
When drawing the footprint of the house, the ‘mud map’ distances used are 6000 units [mm ] across, 3000 units up, 7000 units across, 3000 units down, 8000 units across and an arbitrary length for the last segment. This movie shows how to draw the footprint of a house. When finished, make sure that you save the completed drawing as you will need it for Lesson 2.
When entering values 0,0 for the first point, do not try and type in the command area at the bottom of the screen. Just click in the black screen, type zero from the top row of the keyboard, a comma, a zero and hit enter. Then pull away to the right. You should see the line drawn in red.
Although you may see dimensions in the movie, you see that we erase those. We will leave a discussion of applying dimensions till later.
If you would like some feedback after you have completed this first task, save your drawing and send a copy of it as an attachment to an email to info@designcad.com.au. Please tell us something about you and your learning experience while carrying out this exercise.
Locate existing trees on site
The house footprint has been drawn and we’ll imagine that there is a tree on the site some distance away from the house nearer the back boundary.
Locate back and side boundaries
How to use triangulation to locate the back boundary of a site.
Design a retaining wall
Set out the position of a retaining wall across the back boundary of a site.
Create entertaining areas, water feature and vegetable plot
Setting up zones for entertaining and for a lawn area in a design for the rear of the property.
Create raised adult entertaining zone
Use the offset command to create a zone.
Cut steps in raised entertaining area
Cut a series of steps into a raised platform with the TRIM command in gCADPlus.
Place arrow to indicate direction
We place an arrow from the gCADPlus block library and rotate a group of entities for a more aesthetic view.
Create and place some stepping stones
Placing stepping stones in a landscape CAD drawing. We create a block of a stepping stone some 350 mm radius and copy it several times.
Improve the stepping stone symbol
How to edit blocks in the gCADPlus environment. Editing a block automatically updates every instance of the block in a drawing – a great time saver.
Shift the location of a vegetable plot, mirror text
We use the mirror command to shift a vegetable plot and screens into a more favorable position.
Using grid an snap to help setup hard paving in a service zone
We use an appropriately configured snap and grid settings to design some spaces around a planned vegetable growing area.
Indicate paving for the service area
Create a closed polyline for an area of crushed dolomite paving.
Indicate a paved area by hatching a complex shape
How to define a complex area ready for hatching. We show how to use the arc option in combination with entity snaps.
Start placing landscape symbols
Attach a plant list and tag symbols in a landscape drawing
Improve the appearance of landscape symbols
Change the stack order of entities in a gCADPlus drawing.
Add some text notations
Creating a new text style and using it to add a block of multi line text.
Attach a plant list ready for the generation of a plant schedule
Exporting a plant list from SppDB. Load the resultant .gcp file and associate the data file to a gCADPlus drawing.
Add a new floating viewport to display a plant schedule on an A2 sheet.
How to add a new viewport to display a plant schedule on an A2 layout sheet.
Update a plant schedule because the design has changed
Update plant schedule in a gCADPlus design.
Develop a design for a water feature
Adding a water feature to a gCADPlus landscape design.
Add dimensions.
This movie shows how to use a special gCADPlus tool to stamp a value for a lawn area. We then use the linear dimensioning tool to apply dimensions some steps. The design is for a site in the metric environment where the base unit is millimeters. The dimension style used automatically expresses the final value in an appropriate number of decimal places.
Add a scale bar
The value of adding a scale bar to a landscape drawing.
Print the finished design
It is a good idea quite early in the process of producing CAD landscape plans to run a quick check print. This movie shows how to do that from a gCADPlus design.
Click the image below to see the final PDF version of the design.
