Print
Discuss
Send to friend
Coming on three CDs, Sierra's LandDesigner is now a substantial suite of garden design software. You get six programs covering garden design, construction and planting: LandDesigner 6, Photo Garden Designer 2.3, Ortho Garden Problem Solver, 3D Deck, Garden Planner and Garden Encyclopaedia 3.1.
LandDesigner is the main design component. It lets you design and view your layout in two and three dimensions, starting with a blank page and a cleared plot of up to 300m by 300m. Any shape can be created, including property boundaries, houses, outbuildings, lawns, ponds and flowerbeds. You then drag and drop plants, trees, or garden ornaments from the supplied library.
After creating your landscape and adding lighting and shadows, you can take a virtual stroll around your garden. This is much easier in this version as the direction of movement is controlled by an ingenious cursor. You can also experience seasonal changes, shadows and view accelerated growth over a specified time. If your system has a video card that supports Direct 3D, you may be able to use 3D hardware acceleration. Finally, you can print out your design to scale in 2D and 3D along with a shopping list.
If you're stuck for ideas, you can crib from 40 sample designs, including rose, Japanese and water garden designs, not to mention Feng Shui. Using Photo Garden Designer you can scan in a photograph of your own house or garden and use this as a backdrop instead.
Ortho's Home Gardener's Problem Solver is a new addition, providing you with a database of over 700 common garden problems, including professional advice for maintaining a healthy garden and preventing pests. You can also generate a personalised maintenance schedule, notes and to-do-lists.
Garden Encyclopaedia is an old favourite, being one of the better plant encyclopaedias available. Expanded to include more than 4500 plants, trees and shrubs, it betrays its US origins by its audio pronunciation guides, which are guaranteed to raise eyebrows down at the garden centre. The interface is easy to use, representing a book with pages you can 'turn'. It includes several useful 'how-to' articles, some illustrated by video clips. You also get illustrated lists of plants chosen for specific locations or conditions.
You can make your own lists, using information extracted from the main A-Z database, which includes things like height, colour, soil, climate, season and cultivation hints. Data is summarised in a table of attributes on a secondary screen. A decent-sized photograph can be expanded to show more detail and its caption identifies further salient information.
The Personal Garden Planner intends to keep you ahead of your gardening jobs by planning and sorting your tasks. You also get a customisable reminder system for simple garden maintenance.
Should you want decking in your garden, 3D Deck will help you to design single or multi-level decks and view them in 3D, complete with an animated deck building sequence from the ground up. You can print out your designs in both 2D and 3D and also calculate and print a complete materials shopping list for the design. If you like, you can import your finished deck into LandDesigner 3D.
Contact
Fasttrak 01923 495496
All Home and Entertainment
del.icio.us
Digg this
reddit!
