Landscape designers find that preparing plant schedules is one of their most tedious drafting jobs. Moreover, counting the number of instances of a symbol and assigning correct botanical names is prone to errors. The figure below shows a typical schedule, but every designer will have their own favourite layout style. Here, we include some links to movies showing how to prepare plant schedules. The focus is on tools available in gCADPlus that automate this preparation.
Choosing species
Plant selection is simplified using gCADPlus, as plant database files can be attached directly to the drawing. Work with simple ASCII text files to ensure that each symbol in a plant schedule has the correct botanical spelling.
gCADPlus provides many database files, but users can also easily create and manage their own. The figure below shows a plant database file with more than 500 entries attached to a drawing. Species can be sorted ‘on the fly’ for several characteristics, including botanical name, common name, code, pot size, cost, etc. Individual symbols are then tagged in the list, enabling the automatic generation of a plant schedule.
The list above is quite simple. However, it is possible to put more information into a custom schedule. The list below shows the addition of TYPE and CODE data.
This movie shows how to create a plant database file of species suitable for southern Texas and use it to tag symbols in a simple design. We then run the automated plant schedule tool in gCADPlus to count the number of instances of each species required for the design. The tool draws the plant schedule, and we show how to move it into position on a new C-size layout sheet.
Here, we show how gCADPlus automates one of the most tedious tasks in producing landscape CAD drawings. Using two different designs, we show how to automate and customize the generation of a plant schedule.
This movie shows a design for an enclosed courtyard created using gCADPlus. After assigning each species symbol to an entry in a database file, we draw a plant schedule. Each species used in the design is accurately counted and updated when changes are made to the design.