Here is a link to download free landscape design software – GardenCAD. It’s an early version of gCADPlus. You can create a design for your garden, print and update it as needed. Using this software will give you some idea of the power and ease of use of the latest version of gCADPlus. There is no cost or time limit on the use of this software.
Download this free version from the link below. Use the following information to register your copy. There is no cost or time limit on the use of this software.
User: gCADPlusFree
Activation key: 159F-A60F-A1BE-6235-75F3
Note that we do not offer support for this software. Support is however provided if you purchase the latest version of gCADPlus.
More on CAD for garden design
Working with CAD software benefits professional landscape designers. Please use the link below to download a paper that we have written that sets out the benefits of using CAD software in the hands of a landscape designer. Landscape Design and CAD 
This movie introduces the world of computer-aided landscape drafting and compares the process to hand drafting. To sum up when using CAD to produce your designs rather than hand drafting:
- You work full size when designing. Concern about scale comes later.
- The mouse or touchpad is used to zoom in and pan about to display different views of your design.
- We suggest that the Properties window is kept visible at the left of the drawing editor while drafting as it displays the actual size of entities selected together with a wealth of other information.
- When using CAD and unlike hand drafting, you don’t need to draw every symbol from scratch. A large set of pre-drawn symbols are available.
- The SCALE tool can be used to change the size of a selected symbol.
- A drawing can contain layers. These can be switched on or off at will, displaying more or less of the design. This ability is especially useful when printing a design.
- Symbols can be associated with plant species and will display in the properties box when selected.
- It is possible to automatically generate a plant schedule showing the species name and the exact number of all plants used in the design. If changes are made; the plant schedule can be refreshed and will show count changes.
The movie here gives some guidance on moving from designing on a board to designing in CAD.
References
Here is an overview of various software applications that are used by landscape designers.Landscape design is a two-way street
We suggest that communication between the designer and the client should be ongoing during the design phase. gCADPlus can quickly generate a PDF version of the design quickly and easily. The SavePDF facility even enables zoomed-in views of a portion of the design. These views can be emailed to the client. Once that’s done encourage clients to use the annotation facility in Acrobat Reader and add comments to encourage two-way interaction between designer and client.