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Landscaping Software
In the varied world of computer graphics design software
there exists many choices for a person to try and buy software
that will help them design landscaping for both their home or
business. This software ranges from the very inexpensie and
easy to use all the way to top of the line for the advanced
architectural or landscaping designer. We shall focus our
discussion here on those particular software "suites" retailing
for less than $100.
One of the least expensive and easily accessible is
manufactured and distributed by Valusoft, called "Custom 3D
Land 2010" and retails on the shopping networks for around
$9.99 USD. Custom 3D features a lot map import function, and
comes with an extensive and varied "out of the box" pant and
object library. It is limited, however, in that you cannot
import any digital photos of your house or business. It does
include 3d walkthrough and fly around camera and printing
functions to review and present your design.
Another one that has been on the market for quite some time now
is called "3d Home Architect & Landscape Deluxe Suite 9".
Originally introduced by Bruderbond in the mid 90s, it is now
distributed by a company called "Encore" and retails for around
$9.79. The program features an easy to use "drag and drop"
interface with a very large variety of toolbars for the plants
and objects that can be inserted to the design. It is very
siilar to the "Visio" or "Smartdraw" software appliations and
is actually compatible with them. Another standout feature for
this software are the import and export filetype functions,
including "EPS" or "DXF" which allows it to seamlessly
interface between more advanced CAD or photo design software
suites. This is especially a good feature if the designer is
not well versed in more advanced CAD but has to submit designs
to a professional contractor. More extensive toolbars can be
purchased and downloaded from the manufacturers's website or
user forums, and toolbars can be customized, and individual
objects created from scratch, if the user is that proficient.
The usual 3d camera and printing functions are included.
Moving up the pricing and complexity scale, there is a suite
called "Total 3D Home & Landscape Design Suite 9"
distributed by Individual Software and retailing for about
$34.99. This program features a very simplified home building
tool that enables the user to create total designs in a very
short time. The support and tutorial documentation is very
detailed and quite good including step by step
instructions.
Turbo FLOOR PLAN Landscape & Deck 12 by IMSI retails for
$34.95 and features a blueprint or plan photo scan & trace
function, automatic & manual dimensioning, and individual
object property creation and editing. It also features all the
same bells and whistles of the lower end priced suites
previously mentioned.
Realtime Landscaping Plus 5 by IDEA Spectrum retails for $79.95
is the more professional choice we shall discuss. It features
integraded 3d modeling tools to create your own plants,
furniture and objects, advanced lighting and rendering,
artistic "impressionist" rendering styles, to give your
creations and presentations a bit more industry "flair",
transferable project archiving for easily moving projects
between computers and users, unicode support for added language
and currency localization, "sketchup" support allows importing
of complex 3d models (such as Google Sketchup) textures &
colors, and brilliant 3d panorama rendering.
It should be noted that the more complex the 3d software, the
more your computer must be upgraded to the latest and somewhat
more powerful processor, random access memory (RAM) and hard
drive space, as well as upgrading to the latest version of
Microsoft "Direct X" for fast rendering.
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