Gardening CDs
bpu...@aol.com
I'm interested in getting a program for landscaping and all around
gardening. Can anyone help me as to which program(s) would be my best
bet?
lahu...@gis.net
The magazine Garden Design just had a review of 4-5 different garden
CD's. The general concensus was that they aren't complete and break
down (crash) often. In fact the intro stated that the reviewers seemed
to turn cranky during the review.
I have Sierra Land Designer and am not at all happy with it. I love
computers and use them consistently in many capacities in my life and
work, but for designing a garden...I'll stick to pencil and graph paper
for now.
Laurie Hughes
Donna B.
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I have Sierra LandDesigner 3D. I find it useful. But it's a
landscaping, not a gardening, program. In fact, I get a kick
out of the 3D part. I may find it helpful, since, unlike
some other people, I have trouble visualizing how a plant will
look until I get in the ground & see it there. Oh, the
transplantings I've done! Still, it's not perfect, & I suspect
I will use it in conjunction with graph paper. If you use this,
though, make sure you have a lot of RAM 'cause boy does it use
it up.
But for anyone else who uses this program, the instuctions state
in a couple of places that I can put a roof on the house.
I don't see a roof selection in my program. Am I missing
something in the program, or are the instructions wrong?
--Donna in Dallas
Donna B.
Jutta Haas <jh...@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca> writes:
> bpu...@aol.com wrote:
> >
> > I'm interested in getting a program for landscaping and all around
> > gardening. Can anyone help me as to which program(s) would be my best
> > bet?
>
>
> multimedia, has an extensive encyclopedia on just about everything. It
> gives you suggestions on shade/sun planting for flowers, bushes,
> vegetables, etc. It has a journal where you enter and save your entries
> and a shopping list. What I'm missing however would be a way to design
> my own garden, shift plants or bushes if it doesn't look good, and see
> my garden grow on the screen. Does this exist?
**************************************************************
**************************************************************
Yes, the LandDesigner 3D lets you "grow" your garden, shift
plants, alter the size from the size you initially select (i.e.,
you can make a mature plant even larger or a small one even
smaller).
You can also walk through your landscape & see it at eye level,
you can look up & look through the trees, you can look down
at your garden on the ground. You can also "fly" around your
landscape with a birdseye view. It has a plant encyclopedia
with it, garden & landscape plans, and a shopping list. You
can select pre-formed garden areas, walkways, etc., or you
can draw your own. You can select different types of basic
homes to put on your property, but very few selections as to
doors & windows (I can't find the roofs, so I guess that's
not included) -- but that's because this is a landscape
design program, not a house design, I guess..
It cost me about $50, I think. And it was worth it to me. I
love it! Still, I will end up using graph paper, too.
Jutta Haas
JFR
I have the MIcrosoft CD referred to below and I have Books that Works'
"Garden Encyclopedia". Overall, I like the BTW cd significantly more
than the MS cd. Believe-it-or-not it works smoother on my PC (faster)
and has much better pictures of the plants. The only advantage of the
MS cd is it covers more plants, but in less depth. The BTW cd is
really solid and I highly recommend it. I don't do landscape design by
computer, since I am more trial-by-error, empirical with my design, so
I can't really comment on cds for that application.
In <32A075...@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca> Jutta Haas
Harry Boswell
I picked up Sierra LandDesigner in the bargain bin at Office Depot
for $9.99. For that price, it's a steal. I don't know if I would like
it as much had I paid full price, but it's plenty useful.
--
Harry Boswell hbos...@netdoor.com
Home Page: http://www2.netdoor.com/~hboswell
Jutta Haas
I bought LandDesigner 3D by Sierra yesterday, and am very disappointed.
I guess you can't go by the beautiful pictures on the package. Had some
trouble with installation even though I have passed all the tests they
do during the install process. Overall, I found the options you work
with, i.ed. property choices, house design, etc. are very limited.
"Seeing your garden grow over the years" also limited. Doing graphics
from scratch as in designing the shape of your own house and vegetable
and flower beds is very complicated in my opinion. I did a simple design
of a vegetable bed with only a few veggies in it; it appears as a tiny
blotch on the screen with the names of the vegetables 3 times as large
as the plants themselves. Yes, one can change the fonts apparently, but
it wouldn't take it. Maybe I have to practice more. There are a few
sample gardens which look beautiful, but no detail as in what plants or
shrubs are depicted in the picture. The plant encyclopedia is ok. Has
anyone anything better to add. I think I will try and return it
R. Bharat Rao
Can anyone who has used both "3D Landscape 2.0" by Books that Work,
and "LandDesigner" by Sierra compare those two programs?
Does the Sierra product have support for *CHANGES* in shadows, both
during the day as the sun moves, and at different times in the season?
Also, can they fix the position of the sun automatically based upon
the lattitude (should be trivial to implement).
[I ask, because on scanning the programs in the shop, only the BTW
product said it had "support for shadows"]
Also, has anyone tried *either* product on Windows NT 4.0? I called
both companies, and neither would guarantee any performance on NT --
both said they had not even tested it on that platform.
Thanks,
Bharat
--
R. Bharat Rao E-mail:bha...@scr.siemens.com
Adaptive Information & Signal Processing, Siemens Corporate Research,
755 College Road, Princeton, NJ 08540 Ph:(609)734-6531 Fax:-6565
<Above opinions are exclusively the author's, and don't represent SCR>