Society of Garden Designers Spring Conference

Last weekend The Society of Garden Designers’ Spring Conference was an incredibly popular affair. Tickets were sold out weeks before the event and the

Ready for action – before the crowds arrived

exhibition hall was also full to bursting! The conference was titled “Beyond Borders” and focused on the role of planting in delivering outstanding garden design. For Garden Designers and Landscape Architects everywhere, Vectorworks has proved invaluable in creating planting plans. It enables designers to commit design thoughts to a plan quickly and easily, using favourite combinations, complete with maintenance information if required, from a database of over 8,000 plants. In fact, planting

Vectorworks Landscape Area with planting by percentage.

capability is one of the key reasons designers turn to Vectorworks when looking to move their design practice forward. Plants can be placed individually or in groups using the Place Plant tool. You can use the huge library of plant graphics or create your own. Alternatively, if you don’t want to see individual plants but want to cover an area with a planting mix, use the Landscape Area tool.

2D Plant Symbols with automatically generated labels in Vectorworks Landmark.

Whichever method is most appropriate for you, Vectorworks can do the really tough bit and count the plants for you!

The conference itself is one where the delegates sit in on lectures and then rush to the exhibition hall for refreshments and lunch in-between.  Even with three of us on the stand, it’s still difficult to withstand the crashing wave of visitors as they pour into the exhibition hall. However, we love it! Both the Spring and Autumn conferences are a fantastic showcase for the capabilities of Vectorworks Landmark. Not only that, but our job is made easier by the host of current users eager to explain to non-users the benefits that Vectorworks has brought them. In fact, the two days each year are somewhat like a student reunion, with clients from all over the UK (and occasionally farther afield) turning up to say hello.

Now, we are into the hard work, following up all the people we met, trying to find enough hours in the day to fit in all the online demonstrations that have been booked. Whilst Vectorworks can be downloaded as an evaluation version for 30 days, many people find the online demonstration a great way to get some initial understanding of what Vectorworks can do and how easily it can do it. In some ways, the evaluation on its own can be a bit like someone parking a Formula One car on your drive and telling you to take it for a spin! You might find it difficult to know where to start and you might never reach 4th gear or understand the best way of overtaking. Essentially the online demonstration gets round this by allowing us to share our screen with you, while we talk at the same time – so you see exactly what we are doing and can ask any questions you have along the way.

The online demonstration is also a good way to understand whether an upgrade to Vectorworks 2012 will be useful for you.

So if you are an existing user thinking about upgrading, considering the move to Vectorworks from another CAD system, or contemplating the move away from hand drawing, please email us at info@vectorworks-training.co.uk or call us on 01488 658580 to set up a time and date of your own.

Vectorworks Puts its Head in the Cloud!

Vectorworks Model from Training for Design displayed Vectorworks Nomad iPad app.

In the last week, we’ve seen two announcements out of Vectorworks HQ (should it now be called Cloud Base?) Firstly, the launch of Vectorworks Cloud Services. It’s a service exclusively available to Vectorworks Service Select users—currently in the US and Canada, but it will be with us soon. Vectorworks Cloud Services enables VSS users to place files in a folder on their desktop and have it automatically synchronised to their personal space within the Vectorworks “cloud.” From there, the file is processed, creating PDF documents automatically from the sheet layers. If the sheet layers display viewports with Renderworks render settings and you have a Renderworks licence, the cloud can even render the file for you. So you can carry on using Vectorworks on your desktop while the cloud servers do the work for you! No more tying up your licence waiting for the render to complete.

Your PDFs can be opened on an iPad using the new Vectorworks Nomad® app, and annotated. So, whether you’re an architect, interior designer, kitchen designer, landscape designer, or theatre designer, you’ll be able to discuss the project with the client, mark up the PDF and have those comments sync to your desktop before you’ve even left the meeting.

Vectorworks model displayed within CadFaster app in Walkthrough mode.

In addition to PDF processing within the cloud, you can now make use of the new CadFaster plugin for Vectorworks. Once added to your workspace, you can export 3D models to either an exe file (that runs on a Windows machine and requires no additional software) or, you can export to the cloud and open the file on an iPad using the free CadFaster app. You can rotate and walkthrough the model, select elements and add markup. You can even run live collaborative sessions with other iPad users so that you can share your ideas and get feedback from all those involved in the project early. My sons (10 and 11) love the Walkthrough mode so much they snatched the iPad out of my hands to show me how to work it! So it MUST be cool. Ain’t being “grown up” lovely!

For more information, take a look at our Vectorworks Cloud Services page on our website.

BIM or SIM?

At Training for Design, we spend a lot of time talking to Architects about Building Design and to Landscape Designers about Landscape Design. However, more and more we find Vectorworks users combining the capabilities of Vectorworks Architect and Vectorworks Landmark to create a single model for the overall project. We will be featuring one such case study at Ecobuild in a few weeks time (Stand N431) and we would love to see you there.

With that in mind, on Thursday evening I visited The Royal Institution of Civil Engineers for a talk by Dr. Anne Kemp, Technical Director at Atkins.  The talk was entitled “BIM isn’t Geospatial… or is it?”

The start of the presentation covered familiar “What is BIM?” ground and again reinforced the Vectorworks‘ view that BIM (Building Information Modelling) is not a single technology, but is enabled by technology and talked about the need and move towards open standards within BIM or openBIM. However, it went further to suggest that the whole BIM discussion has focused too much on the “B” for “Building”, when in reality, holding and exchanging information about infrastructure and the site itself is equally important. This information, within a BIM process can then be used to enable more effective construction and operation decisions to be taken earlier in the Design/Build/Operate/Maintain life-cycle of any development.

As I stated at the beginning, Vectorworks users have long had the capability to draft, model and attach information to both building objects and landscape, or site objects, to allow a complete picture of the development to be enabled within an openBIM environment. Indeed Vectorworks has been using “SIM” or Site Information Modelling for the deliverables that Vectorworks can provide.

This message ties back to my post last week and is part of  the CPD session “BIM – your next step”.  So if you want to find out more, why not book your own RIBA accredited CPD session?

Job Vacancy: Junior Landscape Designer / Administrator. Must use Vectorworks Landmark

Yes, despite the gloom and doom employment figures, we’re proud to say that another of our clients is expanding and has a vacancy. This is a super-quick post, but you can find all the details here. Applicants should come to us initially with a copy of your CV, and a covering letter.